


you tire me out but fill me up

by booksnotbookies



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Mortal, F/M, bad music jokes, band kids, kind of enemies?? to friends to lovers, supportive friendships
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:07:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 21,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24515104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/booksnotbookies/pseuds/booksnotbookies
Summary: Out of all the things Annabeth Chase expected when she agreed to be in the pit orchestra for a modern-day musical retelling of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, falling into a plot with Percy Jackson to take down Student Musical Director and Queen of Vocal Fry Drew Tanaka is not one of them. On the one hand, she’s kind of having fun, but on the other hand, she’s kind of in big trouble now. (aka - the band kids au that nobody asked for)
Relationships: Annabeth Chase & Piper McLean, Annabeth Chase/Percy Jackson
Comments: 26
Kudos: 64





	1. first rehearsal - tuesday night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why, hello there! Welcome to the world of self-indulgent and mostly unplanned band kid interactions and also maybe witty banter because I think I’m so funny. Please enjoy your stay.
> 
> Title from SOFI TUKKER’s song “Baby I’m A Queen.”

"Bob!" The man screams, clutching at his chest dramatically. A Burger King paper crown topples on his forehead. "Surely not you!"

Bob smiles grimly at his old mentor before pointing a pistol in his direction. He pulls the trigger. A gunshot sound effect follows about five seconds after Julian crumples on the floor.

Annabeth stifles a yawn. It isn't like anyone can see her display of utter boredom, but she still feels like she needs to be decently respectable, unlike Octavian, who has picked his nose no less than five times since the beginning of Act 2.

They are nearing intermission, which is good, because that means they are halfway done, but bad, because Student Musical Director Drew Tanaka will come over to complain about how poorly Annabeth is playing the tuba. Annabeth can take criticism okay (alright, maybe not  _ that  _ well), but Drew Tanaka doesn't have a musical bone in her body - and if she did, you wouldn't see it under the layers of foundation and Gucci apparel.

And anyways, Annabeth plays baritone.

Mr. Johnson, the pit conductor, sighs and stands up as the segue to intermission begins. Bob riles up a group of angry NYC residents with incendiary words justifying Julian's murder. Jason plays a dramatic french horn solo. Leo is going ham on the timpani. Annabeth holds one note for twenty measures.

Then Drew Tanaka, Student Musical Director, comes up to the stage to announce the beginning of what would be intermission but is, for their rehearsal purposes, actually just a five minute break. Dakota, Student Lighting Director, is too busy cleaning up a Kool-Aid spill near the control panel that he misses the cue and everyone fumbles around in the dark for a bit before the lights come back up. When the lights finally turn on, Mr. Johnson is nowhere to be found.

Annabeth stands up and sees Percy Jackson, who has immediately begun trying to play three saxophones at once.  _ Stupid wind players and their untiring chops, _ she thinks, as she massages her jaw.

Hate is a strong word that Annabeth, ever precise, reserves for the likes of Student Musical Director Drew Tanaka and That Guy Who Stole Annabeth's New Highlighters in Fourth Grade, but she has a love-hate relationship with Percy Jackson. He's a goofy guy that makes her giggle more than she'd like to admit - stern exterior to maintain, and all - but she's also pretty sure the only piece he's practiced all semester is “Careless Whisper” and she strongly, strongly dislikes those kinds of people. Chains are only as strong as their weakest link and bands are only as good as their worst players and unless Mr. Johnson spontaneously decides that they're actually going to be Sexy Sax Men for their winter concert Percy's pretty much just trouble for everyone else.

Drew Tanaka is already coming down to the pit so Annabeth puts her mouth to her horn and tries to look busy. It's too late.

"Hello, Annabeth," Drew says, sidling into the pit like she's walking a runway. "I want to talk to you about something."

Annabeth mutters something like, "I don't," and hears Percy snicker, causing him to choke on three mouthpieces at once.

Drew smiles carefully, posing like a model. "Anna, dear, your solo during the 'Snakes' monologue needs to be more ominous. It's an important scene for Bob's character arc because we get to see his devious side, and you really need to bring that out in your playing."

Annabeth nods. "More devious, right."

"Yes. The way you play it now - it's just so bland. Tasteless. Boring." She smiles again. "Kind of like you."

Drew turns on her heel and leaves, her stilettos echoing loudly.

“Miss Hissy Fit is just upset because you’re not paying respects to her own kind,” says Percy, who has extracted the three horns from his mouth but still looks a bit red in the face.

Annabeth gives him an appreciative smile, which means that she contorts her face into a very fake grin for exactly 2 seconds before turning back around. Percy, however, does not get the message.

“Get it? Because, you know, snakes? Hissy?”

Annabeth does get it, but she does not respond.

"Um, about your solo? I - I think it sounds really nice.”

Annabeth’s not sure how to respond to this, but it turns out she doesn’t have to. Drew, for the first time probably ever, comes to her rescue.

“Hurry up, guys!” yells Drew, “we have to get through at least  _ one _ full run-through tonight, and then I want to spot-check a few more scenes before we wrap up.” 

There is the sound of shuffling and harsh whispering and then a loud and rather alarming crash.

“We’re fine,” calls someone who, from the strain of their voice, is clearly not fine.

“Move it!” screams Drew. “That board is  _ not  _ that heavy. Come on!”

Annabeth cannot say that she was ever looking forward to nightly rehearsals with Resident Mean Girl Drew Tanaka for a week (and then performances for another week? gosh, she really is screwed) but she had thought that at least it was time away from her pesky little twin brothers. As it turns out, Drew’s vocal fry is as annoying as at least, like, 5 eight-year-old boys. Maybe more.

“Where’s Mrs. Gerges?” asks Jason, while clearing out the spit valves in his french horn. Annabeth shifts away from him as spit drips out onto the floor. She wouldn’t give up her trusty baritone Amelia for anything (so what, she named her baritone, lots of people do, Annabeth’s sure) but she sometimes wonders what it would be like playing an instrument that didn’t involve copious amounts of saliva.

“I think she fell asleep,” Hazel answers, mildly. “She must be tired.”

Annabeth looks into the audience seating and sure enough, Mrs. Gerges, the actual adult director who really isn’t that nice but is at least nicer than Drew, is snoring away. Which means that Drew has free rein and rehearsal definitely isn’t going to end when it is supposed to.

Mr. Johnson suddenly reappears by the piano, looking somewhat refreshed but mostly just tired. Annabeth understands - it’s already been three hours and they’re barely halfway through the production. He stops by Annabeth’s seat and immediately she knows that something is wrong.

“Ms. Tanaka has just found that part,” he says. 

She knows what part he’s talking about. It’s coming up right after intermission, and from the (admittedly pretty poor quality) recordings she’s scavenged on YouTube, it  _ sounds _ like there’s a pretty big low brass solo, but the entire song was just missing from Annabeth’s music binder. 

“Okay,” says Annabeth, “I can have it ready by next rehearsal.” This seems pretty generous to her, since their next rehearsal is right after school tomorrow and she’s definitely not getting home until midnight. She reaches out a hand to take the sheet music, but Mr. Johnson’s clutching it protectively to his chest.

“No, she was very insistent. She needs to hear the part today because it’s important and the dancers aren’t going to be here tomorrow.”

Normally teachers aren’t quite so understanding of students’ requests (or demands), but Mr. Johnson (and all of the staff, for that matter) has a tendency to bend over backwards for Drew that definitely has nothing to do with Drew’s mom literally sponsoring the whole production because their high school’s arts budget would definitely not survive the bells and whistles Drew has insisted need to be in the musical otherwise.

But. Trombones are in C and baritones are in B-flat and Annabeth is in  _ trouble _ .

See, here’s the thing. Pit orchestras for musicals usually don’t have baritones. Annabeth is only there because Mr. Johnson said none of the trombones could make it (or, as Piper put it, because Annabeth is the teacher’s pet), so he needed a baritone to cover the part. Now that Annabeth’s here in the pit, she realizes that it’s probably because all the trombones have been in musicals with Drew Tanaka before and have been sufficiently scared away.

Anyways, the point is that Annabeth’s playing all trombone parts, which is normally fine because she got the rest of the music weeks ago and has had plenty of time to transpose (a process she enjoys because she finds it therapeutic) those parts. But not these ones.

Which means she has to transpose the part on the fly. 

And sure, Annabeth didn’t win her band’s impromptu transposition/sight-reading contest in freshman year for nothing, but also she has like two minutes to figure out a solo. Maybe less, considering how angrily Drew is pushing the stage crew.

She takes a breath to steady herself, gives herself a little pep talk, thanks Mr. Johnson, and looks at the music. She feels like that meme with the dog in the burning house, only instead of having a coffee cup she’s holding a massive horn and instead of fire it’s Drew Tanaka’s screaming face. Both are equally frightening, honestly.

A first glance calms her nerves - it’s mostly quarter notes, it’s not terribly high or low - 

And then  _ holy crap six sharps?  _ Well, at least it’s only quarter -

_ Holy crap it’s 182 beats per minute? _

Annabeth is immediately berating herself for not at least looking at someone else’s music before she showed up to rehearsal, especially since she knew that there was a solo right in the part she was missing. To be fair, though, who was she supposed to ask? Octavian, who somehow didn’t stop picking his own nose in preschool? Leo, who scribbled all over his music and folded it into paper airplanes and generally made it illegible? Hazel, who startled if you even opened your mouth to say hello? Jason, who you never saw outside of band because he had like twenty extracurriculars per day? Percy, who -

Annabeth looks up irritably to find Percy staring at her. He’s twisted on his chair and his legs are swinging dangerously close to his saxophone stand. 

  
  


“Hey, do you need help with that?”

“Um, I’m alright, thanks.”

“You sure? You look a bit worried. There’s multiple pages - I can help you write in the notes on one of them! Up a whole step, right?”

“No, seriously, I’m good. It’s just a weird key, is all. I’ve got it.”

Percy, again, does not take the hint. “Wait, let me see,” he says, and leans dangerously far back in his chair to look over her stand. Annabeth is very worried that he will tip over and destroy all of the expensive instruments in their vicinity and knock over her music stand in the process.

On the other hand, maybe she’ll accidentally lose this stupid solo. That sounds pretty good.

“No, look. You’ve got to go up a whole step? So it’s in A flat. That’s an alright key! Besides, this is just the dancers, so it’s not like they’re going to accidentally skip a line and you have to find where they are. Here,” he says, and takes the second page. “I’ll write in the notes for you.”

“Why are you being so nice today?” Annabeth asks sharply, and it’s surprising because you’d think Annabeth was sick of sharps by now. She wants to add, “also, leave me alone, will you?” but she’s not quite that upset.

“Why are you being so mean today, Annabeth?” Percy replies immediately.

Out of the corner of her eye, Annabeth sees Drew hurrying up the stage, probably to announce the end of their break. And also the end of the time Annabeth has to prepare her solo that as of this moment she’s spent exactly 0 minutes and 0 seconds transposing, thanks to stupid Percy Jackson and his hero complex.

She rolls her eyes. “Just give the music back to me, Percy. I’ll figure it out.” Then she thinks she sounds a bit harsh and Percy probably meant the best, so she adds on a hasty “thanks, anyways.”

As it turns out, Percy has written in three note names, which is disappointing but still admittedly better than Annabeth has done. She scribbles in a couple more before the dancers get set and Mr. Johnson gives the cue to start.

Things go decently well until Annabeth realizes that there’s another key change in the middle of the piece, which she manages to struggle through. Apparently, however, Percy also did not notice the key change, because he’s written in large, messy scrawl a F-natural when she’s supposed to be playing an F-sharp now, and Annabeth’s brain explodes trying to keep track of what’s written in the trombone part and what Percy’s written and what she’s actually supposed to play, and she messes up and it’s all downhill from there. At the bottom of the hill is a horrifically terrible note that sounds more like a whoopie cushion than a musical instrument.

“ _ Annabeth  _ Chase!” shouts Drew from the seats.  _ “Annabeth  _ Chase, was that you,  _ Annabeth _ ?”

Annabeth is literally the only one playing, so it’s pretty obvious that, yes, it was her.

“What an absolute  _ disgrace _ , Annabeth!” says Drew. “What a  _ disgrace _ to a respectable production! Do you know how hard everyone has worked to put this together? Put some effort into it, Annabeth! You will destroy the entire production! You don’t want me to have to call my mother, do you?”

Annabeth concurs that no, she does not want Drew to have to call her mother.

“You  _ don’t _ want me to call my mother!” Drew repeats, emphatically. “Do you know - ”

“It’s almost 10, Drew,” says Mrs. Gerges, who’s finally woken up, probably from Drew’s loud tirade. Everyone is clearly relieved but tries not to look overeager because Drew’s angry eyes are searching the room for her next victims. “Maybe we should let everyone go.”

Drew hesitates but ultimately relents. “Alright, alright, pack it up! Get to bed when you get home so we can be ready for a long day tomorrow! I’ll be keeping you late because we  _ need  _ to finish a run-through! Now, skedaddle!”

Everyone stands around for a bit and then hurries to change out of their costumes and grab their things. Dakota has passed out, his cup of Kool-Aid spilled over and pooling near the controls, so they hustle in the dark. Percy, hastily putting down his saxophone, intercepts Annabeth as she runs to the band hall.

“Hey, I’m sorry, that was my fault, wasn’t it? I forgot about the key change, right? I’m really sorry. It wasn’t intentional or anything, I just screwed up.”

Annabeth pushes past him and squeezes backstage, wielding her horn like a magical crowd-parter as the theater kids are helping each other out of zippers and gossiping about Drew.

“I’ll do anything to make it up to you. Anything, really,” pants Percy, chasing after her.

Annabeth groans. This is absolutely the last thing she wants to deal with at 10 o’clock on a Tuesday night. So she says, “get rid of Drew Tanaka, will you?” and heads towards the doors.

Percy laughs. “I mean, I kind of wanted to do that anyways. Seriously, what can I do for you? I - ”

But Annabeth is already too far down the hallway to hear his next words. She basks in the silence, in the tile floors echoing under the tap of her sneakers.

Once Annabeth’s put away her horn and packed away her stuff, she heads to the parking lot and climbs into her dad’s Prius, sending a quick text to her parents to let them know she’s running late but on her way. Looking up, she sees Percy hanging by the front doors. He puts a hand up to acknowledge her, then sends her a thumbs up and wink.

  
Then he mouths  _ Drew _ and runs a finger along his throat, his face too smiley for her to take him seriously. She’s not sure what he’s planning, but she is sure that it’s not good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first off: I’m honored that you read this far, unless you just scrolled down to the bottom of this page, in which case I’m still honored that you cared that much.
> 
> This fic is inspired by three things:  
> 1\. My longing for the days of pit orchestras before having a bunch of people playing wind instruments and singing in a small space became a very bad idea.  
> 2\. The song “Baby I’m A Queen,” which provides the title for this work. When I first heard it, I was like, “wow, this would be a cool song for Annabeth Chase!” And what do you know, here we are.  
> 3\. My constant need to use band instruments as personality tests because instrumentalists have a type just as good as Myers-Briggs. (Okay, maybe that’s not true, but kind of.) Annabeth is a baritone, fight me. (Don’t actually I’m very sensitive)
> 
> At any rate, I hope you enjoyed this! I can’t promise that updates will be timely, but I will promise that this work will be finished. I’m really excited to embark on my first published fanfiction, so maybe that will be motivating.
> 
> See you at some point in the future!


	2. band practice - wednesday morning

The Goode High School football team was, despite their name, never very good, and this season was no different. This was understandably disappointing to the football team and their girlfriends. Annabeth, who personally has very little interest in the football team, is mostly just happy that marching band season is over.

Annabeth’s only disappointment is that the end of marching band season does not mean the end of early morning practices, which seem kind of unnecessary now that they’re in full concert band mode and always inside. This disappointment is never clearer than when she’s chugging her last bit of coffee at six in the morning ( _ no food or drink in the band hall! _ ) or lugging her backpack and case through the narrow hallways while trying to avoid bowling anybody over and sending them to the emergency room to get five stitches in their forehead (she’s still very sorry, Travis). 

The point is that Annabeth’s journey to the band hall is already fraught with dangers and Travis’ wary eyes and is definitely a bad time to come by and try to strike up a conversation.

So it is only fitting that on this lovely Hump Day morning, Mr. Careless Whisper himself strides up to Annabeth and greets her with a hearty “hello, Annabeth!”

Annabeth is half-awake which makes her simultaneously grumpier inwardly and more docile outwardly. She manages a, “hi, Percy, what’s up,” and maneuvers her case around to take another gulp of her coffee.

Percy wants to say something like “the sky” or “the leaky bathroom next to the teacher’s lounge that’s definitely haunted, I think, but I don’t really remember the floor plan of this building that well,” Annabeth can tell. She appreciates that he curbs himself and instead says, “I was thinking about what you were saying last night. About Drew.”

As much as Annabeth doesn’t enjoy being ordered about by Drew, she also doesn’t want to be kicked out of the pit orchestra and maybe even the entire arts program by the all-powerful Mrs. Tanaka, so she says, “I was joking about that.” She pauses and decides that she should be honest. “Well, actually, I was partially joking.”

Percy shakes his head. “Oh, I know you don’t actually want to hurt Drew. You just want the best for everybody, I get it.”

Even Annabeth doesn’t believe that about herself, but this isn’t the time for self-deprecation. At any rate, Percy is plunging along.

“I thought I would take it upon myself to do something about this, on your behalf, as an apology.”

“On my behalf?”

“Yeah, on your behalf. Why do you sound so skeptical?”

“Literally yesterday you said, and I quote, that you were planning to do something about Drew anyways.”

“I think I actually said that I  _ wanted  _ to do that anyways, but good on you for half-listening.” Percy slips by and opens the band hall doors for Annabeth and her unruly load, making an over-exaggerated butler’s bow as he does so. “I didn’t think you were listening at all, actually. Consider me impressed.”

Annabeth forces out a laugh as she dumps her things on the floor. “So. What’s the plan?”

“Well, the issue really is that Drew isn’t - she isn’t  _ handling her duties very well _ , so to speak. After you left I snuck around backstage a bit - doing some spying, you know - and heard that the theater kids are having a meeting this morning. I was thinking we could catch Mrs. Gerges before homeroom and just explain the situation.”

“We?”

“Yeah, we. I figured you’re better at words than I am. Like, of the two of us, who’s more likely to be a diplomat? You, obviously.”

Annabeth would rather die than be a diplomat, but she ignores this and voices her other concerns instead. “She’ll kick us out of the pit.”

“She can’t, it’s too late. They can’t get another saxophone player in and ready to go for the performances on short notice, and there’s not another baritone. Besides, we’ll be respectful. We’re just students voicing our concerns. She’s got no reason to kick us out.”

This is true. The saxophone section is full of very promising but also very young freshmen and all the trombones are already out. Annabeth has to admit that she expected something much worse - like TPing the Tanaka mansion or playing The Lick on repeat in protest until Drew quits - so she hesitantly agrees to his plan.

“Great!” says Percy, and the look of complete surprise on his face makes Annabeth wonder if she should have agreed. “I’ll catch you after band, okay?”

She nods and heads to her seat to warm up.

Mr. Johnson is standing by his podium, conducting through one of their pieces as he waits for the students to get set. He’s normally a pretty quiet guy, but in the band hall he becomes something entirely different. He throws his arms around with vigor, mouthing incomprehensible syllables, twisting his face into never-before-seen facial expressions that Annabeth would have previously thought physically impossible. He’s like a facial contortionist, she thinks, the kind of bizarre act you’d see on  _ America’s Got Talent  _ and be equal parts amazed and horrified and confused by. Even after almost three years of this, it takes a moment for Annabeth to stop staring at him.

Fiddling with her valves, she turns her focus around the room. Since Piper’s not at rehearsal today, a couple of the flutes have printed out a large, grainy picture of her at her last red carpet and stuck it onto her seat. Annabeth laughs a little and takes out her phone to send Piper a picture.

Piper’s out with her dad, who has some big movie premiere coming up, so it’s time for her to fulfill her duty as a sweet daughter and make her dad look like a great family man. Annabeth misses her greatly, not only because life is lonely without her only friend swiping fries from her tray at lunch but also because Piper’s absence means that second chair flute Octavian gets to be in the pit, whose nose-picking is the second worst thing about being in the pit.

Eventually Mr. Johnson ends his astonishing performance and steps onto the podium, motioning that warm-ups are over. Octavian continues playing a few seconds after Mr. Johnson gives the cutoff and is rewarded with Band Director Side-Eye (patent pending).

“I want to try something new today,” says Mr. Johnson, fiddling with the end of his baton. “We have a lot of very strong individual players in our band, but we don’t have a great blend as a group. I want to test your listening skills, force you to understand not just your part, but how your part fits with everyone else.

“I want you to sit by somebody else. Hear what they play, understand how it fits with what you play. Hear the blend of the instruments and add to it.

“Before you all run off to sit by your friends, here’s the rules. One, move at least two chairs away. Two, don’t sit by anyone playing the same part as you.

“Alright, go! You have 1 minute.”

Annabeth barely manages to stuff her music back in its folder, tuck her baritone under her arm, and make her way off the risers in 1 minute. That leaves her with only one seating option, which is -

\- right next to Percy Jackson.

“Fancy seeing you here,” says Percy, shuffling over to let her in.

Annabeth is honestly surprised that the only seat open is the one near Percy - she thought she’d be condemned to sit next to the piccolo and have her ears ringing for the rest of the day - so she asks, “did you save this seat for me?”

“No,” says Percy, immediately. Then he backtracks and says, “well, I didn’t  _ not  _ save it for you.”

Annabeth’s not really sure what that means, but she doesn’t have time to ponder it. Mr. Johnson likes to give measure numbers exactly 5 milliseconds before he counts the band off, so her early-morning brain is pretty occupied.

As it turns out, sitting next to Percy isn’t so bad. He has a distracting tendency to audibly tap his foot at all times and to play with his keys whenever Mr. Johnson is talking, but for the most part he’s pretty respectful and he’s actually  _ playing  _ (which is more than she can say for the guy sitting on her other side, who’s just puffing his cheeks out and breathing heavily in every rest like he’s engaged in a more strenuous activity than checking Snapchat while pretending to write notes down on his music, but she digresses) and he even  _ sounds good _ , like maybe he’s actually practiced something other than Careless Whisper all semester.

(On the other hand, maybe not. She’s seen his practice charts. They’re horrifying.)

Mr. Johnson stops the band to yell at the trombone section for being out of tune (“Are you even hearing yourselves? You’re literally holding your tuning slide! You have no excuse to be this flat! Fourth position! Is that your fourth position? No, that is  _ not  _ fourth position!”) and Annabeth is simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief that it’s not her in the line of his angry baton and pitying the poor trombones when Mr. Johnson suddenly turns towards her.

“Listen to baritone! She’s got a similar part and she’s in tune. Can I hear just baritone there, please?”

Annabeth, like every band kid except maybe Octavian, dislikes playing in front of everyone in normal circumstances, but something about playing next to Percy is intimidating. She’s not sure what’s more alarming: that she’s afraid to play in front of Percy Jackson, of all people, or that she has no idea why.

She manages to get through the section without embarrassing herself and the next five generations of her descendants, so she relaxes, thinking her trial is over, when Mr. Johnson says:

“Great! Now, add tenor sax.”

Which is not good, not only because she has to play the section  _ again  _ in front of everybody, but because tenor sax is  _ Percy _ and for some reason she’s scared of messing up in front of him.

Mr. Johnson counts them off and Annabeth’s heart rate is about twice as fast as the tempo they’re at and her dazed mind is wondering if maybe having a heart attack is a good excuse to get out of pit orchestra or if Drew will just yell at her for letting down their respectable production. She thinks probably the latter is more likely and imagines Drew screaming at her and calling her a disappointment while she’s in the ICU.

Annabeth usually has good mental discipline, she swears.

_ Focus, Annabeth _ , she thinks.  _ Think about the tuning. Think about the blend. Don’t think about Drew. Don’t think about the ICU. That rhymes. Don’t think about it rhyming. _

Annabeth’s ability to advise herself is apparently better than Alice in Wonderland’s, so she manages a decidedly not whoopie-cushion-like melody, which she counts as a victory.

It’s the small things in life.

Mr. Johnson throws his hands up as soon as they’re finished. “Excellent, bravo! Do you hear how they blend? When you listen, you shouldn’t hear a tenor sax and a baritone, you should hear a whole new instrument, a new color, that encompasses both instruments.

“When we paint with our notes, we don’t want to have stripes of color standing starkly next to each other and we don’t want to have a wash of brown and gray. We want a gradient, a rainbow, where every instrument is present and the edges of your sound melt away into your neighbor’s.”

Then he turns towards Annabeth directly, and says, “You guys sound great together! Taps for Annabeth and Percy!”

“Taps” are Mr. Johnson’s method of hands-free applause for when students are holding extremely expensive school instruments. He adopted it after Travis’ brother Connor, who is not in band, attempted to impersonate Travis and also to applaud while holding a trumpet he didn’t actually know how to hold. The incident resulted in a destroyed school instrument, a strained arts budget, and several angry phone calls from Mrs. Stoll (“what do you mean you couldn’t tell them apart? My sons are  _ unique individuals _ , I’ll have you know!”). 

Everyone in the band obediently taps their feet and nobody moves their hands. Percy nudges her in the arm and sends her a grin. Annabeth feels vaguely pleased but also unsettled.

The feeling remains all throughout practice, as Annabeth mechanically goes through the motions of playing a low brass part, which involve a lot of counting and a lot of repetition and not a whole lot of notes. By the time Mr. Johnson dismisses them with his usual forceful reminder to practice, she’s almost forgotten about the whole contronting-Mrs. Gerges-about-Drew thing.

Almost.

“Ready to go?” Percy asks her, stowing his case away. 

Annabeth, planner extraordinaire, is rather frightened by showing up at Mrs. Gerges’ room to complain about her star student without a speech prepared and at least three backup plans, but she’s certainly not going to get another opportunity and also Percy’s not really waiting for an answer. She supposes this is fair, since she’s already agreed to the plan and they don’t have that much time, but she still wishes she had another moment (or, preferably, like three hours) to ready herself.

They hurry down the hallways and nearly trample Mrs. Gerges, who is heading out of her room.

“Hello, Mrs. Gerges,” says Percy, immediately assuming a formal tone and straightening his back. Mrs. Gerges looks like she’s still recovering from the shock of seeing two gangly teenagers she’s barely met before appear out of thin air, but Percy disregards this. “We wanted to discuss with you some concerns we had with the student leadership for this year’s musical production? Do you have a moment?” 

“Uh,” says Mrs. Gerges, insightfully. Percy takes this as a yes.

“The fact of the matter is,” he continues, very business-like, “that Drew Tanaka is causing a great toll on the mental health of the cast and crew with her extreme demands. She simply has unrealistic expectations for what our high school musical production can be. And while I admire her ambition, I’m not sure she’s the right choice for Student Music Director.”

“We’re not saying you should get rid of her,” adds Annabeth, quickly, trying to build on Percy’s argument while gauging Mrs. Gerges’ reaction. “We’re just asking you to discuss with Drew how her forceful actions may be harming other people more than helping. We want this production to be the best it can be, but we also want to respect the mental and physical needs of everyone involved, Drew included. And in fact, loosening the harsh demands put on the crew by ensuring that everyone is excited and ready for the performances next week will likely improve the quality of the production.”

Mrs. Gerges frowns. “I don’t condone gossiping. If you have an issue with Drew’s management style, that’s something you need to address with her directly.”

“Well,” says Percy, nervously, “building on what Annabeth said - we want what’s best for everyone, including Drew. I’m sure the expectations that Drew is putting on  _ herself _ are taking their toll on her. When you’re in the middle of something, sometimes it’s hard to realize how hard you’re pushing other people. And yourself. That’s why we wanted to talk to you, as a separate third party.”

“No. You guys are nearly adults. If you truly believe that Drew is not a capable leader - ” here Percy interjects with a “we’re not,” but is quickly silenced by a disapproving look - “then you need to discuss that with her. I’m not going to speak to her on your behalf. Speak to her yourself. Besides, you’ve only had one rehearsal. Maybe you’ll get used to her methods. Okay? Now, run to homeroom, I’m not signing you a late pass. I’m very busy.”

She then proceeds to push past them and leisurely walk to the ladies’ room.

So much for that.

“Well,” says Percy, as they watch Mrs. Gerges head to the bathroom, “that didn’t go as planned.”

Annabeth shrugs, fixated on Mrs. Gerges’ swaying back. “It’s alright. We tried.”

“Maybe Mrs. Gerges is right. We’ll get used to it, right?”

The bell rings and Percy sighs, shifting his backpack onto his other shoulder. “Alright, I’m heading out. Mission failed, I guess. See you at rehearsal tonight?”

And for some reason, despite Drew, Annabeth is actually excited.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope someone else gets that Alice in Wonderland reference and it doesn’t just confuse everyone
> 
> Anyways - I hope you liked this chapter! Writing this is going a lot faster than I had anticipated so I am here to announce that starting with the next chapter I am committing to updating every Saturday.
> 
> Also! Huge thank you to everyone who read the first chapter - thank you so much for taking the time to read this story and I hope that you enjoyed it. I was really excited to see how many people mentioned that this brought back good memories for them or that they were excited about a band kids fic - like, I was not expecting that many people to be into it and was so pleasantly surprised. I think, as a writer, probably the best compliment I can get is that a fic made you happy. So thank you.
> 
> See you on Saturday!


	3. second rehearsal - wednesday afternoon

The second rehearsal for  _ Julian _ , the musical adaptation of  _ Julius Caesar _ which was made purely because there were too many adaptations of  _ Romeo and Juliet _ already, begins with a bang. Several, actually. 

The first comes when Drew slams the auditorium door right in Annabeth’s face. Annabeth usually prides herself on her quick reflexes, but holding a loosely held-together music folder and a very large horn decreases them somewhat. The heavy door barely misses her nose and Annabeth enters rehearsal with a scowl.

Drew is standing by the door, her lips pursed to a degree that’s more ducky than flattering. Her head is tilted to one side and she’s staring at the door like she knows exactly what she’s doing.

“Oh,  _ sorry _ , Annabeth,” she says. “I didn’t notice you there. I just didn’t see anything of note behind me, you know?”

“Naturally,” says Annabeth. “You’re barely self-aware enough to notice yourself.”

“Ah, well. At least you aren’t hurt, dear. What would we do without our star tuba player?”

“You almost broke my nose,” Annabeth points out.

“Pity I missed. Your nose could use some flattening.”

Annabeth’s never been self-conscious of her nose before, but she resolves to look in a mirror next time she sees one.

Or not. Annabeth’s smarter than that. She won’t play Drew’s games. She rolls her eyes and heads for the pits with a shrug, sending Drew the middle finger through her pant pocket.

The second bang comes when Percy Jackson arrives precisely one minute before rehearsal is set to begin, slamming his bags down under the piano and throwing himself into his seat.

Annabeth’s fists are still clenched from her encounter with Drew, her shoulders tight and eyes fixed on her music. The clatter as Percy’s backpack connects with the ground doesn’t shake her forced concentration.

“Hopefully I’m not this late on all my other entrances,” Percy says, dropping his music on the stand before catching sight of her stiff frame.

“You okay?” he asks, looking around from his music and staring directly at her.

Annabeth makes herself look at him. “I’m fine. Just Drew.”

Jason, who’s sitting next to her but has yet to say a word, grimaces silently. Everyone nods along to that sentiment, even Octavian.

“I’m sorry that this morning didn’t work out,” Percy says, peeking over at Drew before snapping his attention back to Annabeth. “I should have known.”

“It’s fine.”

Drew starts yelling that rehearsal is beginning and Percy turns around again.

The third bang comes seconds later. The girl who plays Cassie is getting set for the opening scene when the backdrop behind her topples, crushing her leg.

Mrs. Gerges and a bunch of crew members rush up immediately. The girl manages to stand up, bracing herself between two stagehands and limping off stage, her eyes wet with tears.

“Gwen!” yells Drew from the audience, raising her water bottle as if proposing a toast to Gwen’s injury. “Can you finish rehearsal today?”

Gwen bites her lip and shakes her head slightly.

“Gwen?”

“No,” Gwen chokes out. Mrs. Gerges holds open the door as the two stagehands help Gwen out.

Drew groans and calls after Gwen’s hunched back. “Alright, I’ll read your lines for today. Be back Friday, alright? This isn’t some fancy production. We don’t have an understudy.”

Another member of the crew, carefully replacing the backdrop, turns around to look at Drew. “I’m really not sure that’s wise - ” 

Drew rolls her eyes. “Oh, come on! That’s backdrop’s basically poster board.”

“Drew, let’s not - ” begins Mr. Johnson.

“Give her a break, Drew,” says Percy, standing up. “I know your cold heart is too full of Starbucks iced lattes to feel anything, but Gwen’s clearly injured. I’m sure someone can cover for her on Friday.”

“Jackson,” warns Mr. Johnson.

Drew steps towards the pit. “Friday’s important. It’s the only day we’re not doing a run-through, since we didn’t finish one yesterday, no thanks to your friend over there. I can’t be missing a major cast member.” 

“Oh, please,” Annabeth says. “We’re rehearsing again all morning Saturday. We’ll have plenty of time to catch Gwen up if she’s able to come, and if not, we’ll have time to find a replacement.”

“A replacement! What kind of place do you think this is? Where do you think I’m going to find a replacement?”

“Oh, I don’t know. You’re the director - why don’t you actually do something for once?”

“Annabeth,” warns Mr. Johnson.

“You’re right, Annie, I’m the director, not you. Why don’t you stop sticking your smartass head into everyone else’s business?”

Percy steps closer to Drew. “The only reason you’re in charge is because your mom funded the whole thing. Don’t pretend like you earned this position.”

“I did earn this position and I am absolutely the most qualified person for it. Besides, don’t throw nepotism at me as if you’re not here for the same reason!”

Annabeth drops her baritone on her chair, the clang twisting something in her that she quickly pushes away as she comes to Percy’s side. “ _ Qualified _ ? What kind of qualifications do you have? The ability to pick out the most fluorescent shade of eyeshadow?”

“Chase, Jackson! That’s enough. Hallway, now.” demands Mr. Johnson, twirling his pencil dangerously in his fingers. Mr. Johnson is notorious for throwing pencils when angry, so Annabeth and Percy reluctantly obey.

Drew’s lips are tightly pursed as she watches them go. The only sound is the squeak of Annabeth’s sneakers and the nearly audible gaze of every student in the room. Mr. Johnson looks around before sighing and heading into the hallway.

In the hallway, Mr. Johnson leans back against the wall, a pencil flipping around in his right hand and his left hand pulling on his earlobe. The light tapping of shoes from the next hallway crescendos until an elderly woman appears, who quickly glances at Mr. Johnson and his two students, all their faces clouded and passive, and gives her fellow teacher a sympathetic smile. Annabeth hates the look and subconsciously straightens her back.

“I understand,” Mr. Johnson begins, and then sighs deeply again.

“I understand Drew’s being harsh,” he continues, “but she’s also right. Gwen’s not seriously injured and there aren’t any measures in place in case one of the cast can’t perform. Either Gwen’s able to return or Drew plays Cassie herself.”

“She’s not just being harsh,” Percy insists. “She’s being rude to undeserving people. For what? Her own pride?”

“Look, Drew has high standards. Partially her own, partially because there’s pressure on her to do a lot with a little. It’s your responsibility to address where she might not be handling that pressure maturely, and I’m proud of you for standing up for someone you felt was being treated unfairly.”

At this, Percy mirrors Mr. Johnson and leans back against the wall, turning his head to keep his sight on the band director. Annabeth looks back and forth at the two people she’s between, her fingers fiddling with her shirt hem.

But Mr. Johnson’s not done. “Don’t think I’m letting you two off. You’re at fault here, too. You lost your temper. You made things personal. You keep saying that you’re just concerned about Drew’s leadership style - and I see you there - but that’s no need to descend into petty insults. How can you judge her leadership if you don’t show yourselves to be any better?”

There’s a tense lull. Mr. Johnson’s disappointed anger is usually reserved for those members of the band whose practice charts are populated with zeros - and not the kind that come directly after other numbers - and the sensation is so frightening for Annabeth that she nearly forgets her hatred for Student Musical Director Drew Tanaka. Annabeth’s always found her band director passionate and often a little  _ too much _ so, but never terrifying.

Percy, though, seems unaffected. It might be that he’s simply accustomed to Mr. Johnson’s death stare, but his bright green eyes don’t falter from Mr. Johnson’s face, his shoulders deliberately loose, one arm propping himself up on the wall.

Finally, Mr. Johnson’s voice cracks the silence. “I’m not stupid. I’m not going to make you stay around in the hallway to think about what you’ve said, because I know that won’t do anything. I’m going to talk to Drew, alright? Run to the band hall, chill out, and come back when your head’s clear, okay?”

“What keeps us from skipping out on the rest of rehearsals?” Percy asks, tapping his fingers against his leg.

Annabeth’s mildly appalled by his use of  _ us _ \- her morals will keep her going back to rehearsal, okay - but decides this is a bad time to butt in.

Mr. Johnson stands up straight, turning head-on to Percy. “I trust you. I trust that you’re invested in this production - and its people, even Drew. That you know what the right thing to do is.”

Then he waves his hand in the direction of the band hall. “Now. Go. Be gone by the time I come out with Drew - I’m not handling another confrontation.”

Percy and Annabeth dutifully skedaddle.

* * *

The lights in the band hall are off and Annabeth trips over three wires and two chairs in an attempt to turn them back on. When light finally floods the room, she finds herself disturbingly close to The Metronome, the secondary source of ear drum damage for all band musicians. (The primary source is, naturally, the piccolo.) Annabeth slowly backs away, careful not to touch and somehow turn it on at full volume despite it not being plugged in, and Percy laughs loudly, the sound echoing in the empty room.

“It’s not a monster, Annabeth,” he says, collapsing into the first flute chair. It’s weird seeing him in Piper’s seat, and Annabeth almost asks him to move before realizing how strange that request would be.

Percy’s legs are stretched out onto the conductor’s podium, tipping him dangerously far back in his chair. He rubs his eyes and yawns, glancing at the clock.

“Well,” he says, “we did what Mrs. Gerges asked.”

Annabeth laughs stiffly. “Not in the way she intended, but I guess so.” She walks over to Percy and slowly lowers herself in the chair next to him.

“Just sit down,” says Percy, patting the back of her chair. “I’m not a monster, either.”

It’s strange, being in the band hall when it’s completely quiet, when all the stands are placed as neatly as they will ever be and the chairs are mostly straight and there aren’t any instruments out except a random sousaphone that’s hanging on the wall and it’s just Annabeth and Percy sitting together in the flute section.

Annabeth’s in the middle of wondering how rude it would be to take out her phone right now compared to continuing their charade of Looking Everywhere Except At Each Other Awkwardly when Percy breaks in and says, “so - what do you want to do?”

What Annabeth actually wants to do is run to the ladies’ room and text Piper about her mortification and Drew, but that isn’t a group activity, so she remains silent.

Percy says, “okay, then,” and gets up, leaning on his stand and tapping his foot irregularly.

Then he suddenly declares, “look at this!” and shoves all of his weight on the top of his stand. It tilts back by about 1 cm. “It doesn’t move at all. Piece of junk,” he says, and kicks it over.

“Hey!” Annabeth interjects, because even though debate is meaningless and she wants to go back to rehearsal, she’s really quite opinionated about this. “Your stand is better than mine, at least. Stiff stands are better than wobbly ones.” 

“Yeah, but you can barely use this one at all if it’s at the wrong angle,” Percy complains, picking the stand up and setting it down noisily. “That one doesn’t move if you don’t touch it.”

“Okay, but once you’ve got that one set,  _ you’re _ set. With a wobbly stand, it’s forever wobbling. If I were to kick this accidentally - ” she gives it a little push with her foot - “everything shifts. If I’ve got papers on this stand, they’ve fallen off. I’m screwed.”

“But you couldn’t adjust this thing in the first place!”

“You could! Put some elbow grease into it.”

“I did! Here, you try,” Percy says, shoving the stand towards her.

Annabeth braces her foot on the stand leg and pushes firmly on the stand. With a little strength and a lot of pride, she manages to adjust the stand to a suitable angle and sits back, satisfied. Percy looks impressed and is also...blushing?

“Fine, then,” he says, finally. “What’s your perfect stand, Mrs. I-know-everything-about-stands?”

The truth is that Annabeth’s never shown anybody her lucky stand, which she makes sure is set by her chair at every concert. It’s never let her down yet, so although she’s not superstitious or sentimental, Annabeth just doesn’t feel quite right performing without it. She’s actually excited to share her enthusiasm for an inanimate object with someone who has to listen, so she tells him to close his eyes and grabs it from its hiding place in the darkest corner of the band closet.

“Look. Easy to twist around so the legs aren’t in the way of your feet. Just enough tension to adjust the height easily. Just enough tension to adjust the angle of the stand. The perfect stand.” She plunks it down in front of Percy.

Percy just laughs, testing the stand with one arm. “Alright, alright. Where do you keep this?”

“That’s my secret,” Annabeth says. “I’ve already shown you the stand. Don’t think I’m going to show you the hiding place, too.”

Percy laughs again. “Alright, alright. Go stash it away, I won’t look.”

Annabeth has a weird feeling that he’s laughing  _ at  _ her, but she goes and stashes her stand away anyways.

“This is fun,” says Percy, when she returns. Then, all in a rush - “we should hang out sometime.”

Annabeth crinkles her eyebrows. “What?”

“We should hang out sometime. Like, outside of band? Because this is fun.”

Annabeth’s not sure how to respond, so she just says, “um, sure.”

“Cool,” says Percy. “What about tomorrow after school at Starbucks?”

“First you say, ‘let’s hang out  _ sometime _ ’ and now you’re like, ‘meet me at Starbucks  _ tomorrow _ ’? Moving a little fast, aren’t you?”

Percy blushes again. “Well, I’m not doing anything tomorrow afternoon.”

To be fair, Annabeth isn’t either. Her dad and Helen have been working late all this week and Piper’s not back until late Thursday night. Annabeth likes the productivity of alone time but spending the afternoon with company sounds nice, too. So she says, “alright?”

“Cool,” says Percy. “It’s a date.” Then he flushes. “I mean, it’s not a  _ date _ , but it’s - it’s the date that we’re setting. I mean - you know.”

Annabeth laughs. “I know what you mean, Percy.” Instinctively, she reaches out and lays a hand on Percy’s shoulder. As soon as she realizes what she’s done, she wants to retract her hand, but the motion feels so natural and Percy seems so unbothered that she leaves her hand on him for a moment more.

Percy stares at the scuffed tips of his shoes until Annabeth says, “want to head back?”

“Hmm? Oh, yeah,” Percy says, blinking rapidly like he’s just woken up, “let’s go.” 

They’re heading down the hallway when Annabeth’s stomach growls loudly. Percy gives her a look.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Well, I mean - I’m a bit hungry. I skipped lunch today to practice that solo.”

“I’ll buy you something from the vending machine,” offers Percy, motioning towards it.

“No, no,” says Annabeth. “I can’t eat. I have to play.”

“I’ll buy you something, anyways,” Percy insists. “You can eat it after. Here, what do you want?”

“Percy, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.”

But Percy shakes his head. “No, just let me buy you something. Doritos okay?” 

This is a rhetorical question. Most students use the machine closer to the caf, so Doritos are the only thing in the hallway vending machine that has been replaced in the last decade. Annabeth likes her digestive system the way it is, so she agrees.

Percy buys two bags and chucks one to Annabeth as they continue to rehearsal. They can hear Drew’s screaming voice as they enter, the sound of the door making everyone turn around.

Drew immediately gives them the middle finger behind her back, so Annabeth figures her talk with Mr. Johnson had little impact. At any rate, she appreciated the break from rehearsal and whispers a quick  _ thank you _ to Mr. Johnson as she slips into her seat.

To her surprise, Hazel turns towards her shyly and says, “if you were wondering about Gwen - they said she’s okay. Her knee is a little bruised but the cut isn’t deep, so she’ll be sore but she won’t need stitches. She should be back Saturday.”

Annabeth smiles. “Okay. Thanks, Hazel.”

Hazel looks surprised to hear her name in Annabeth’s mouth, as if she didn’t realize Annabeth knew who she was. She smiles and turns away quickly, wetting her clarinet reed in her mouth. Then she turns back to Annabeth.

“We’re right before the ‘snakes’ soliloquy,” she says. “Um, if you were wondering.”

Annabeth thanks her again and quickly flips to the page. Maybe Mr. Johnson’s talk did have some effect, because rehearsal is moving a lot faster than it did yesterday. Or maybe it’s because Mrs. Gerges is awake this time.

On stage, Bob is standing in his courtyard, holding a flashlight as he awaits the arrival of his fellow conspirators. Annabeth hurries to get set for her apparently-not-devious-enough solo.

Bob dismisses his butler and carefully flicks his dark hood up as he tosses his flashlight in the bushes, the rattle as it hits the stage Annabeth’s cue to start. She summons every devious bone in her body, sliding the notes together as sleazily as she can and dramatically increasing in volume as Bob determines that his former mentor’s tyranny must be rewarded with death.

She catches Drew’s critical eye as she finishes and can’t resist giving a wink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And thus, Annabeth’s sass makes her debut.  
> I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Percy and Annabeth’s not-date coming next Saturday.


	4. the not-date - thursday afternoon

It was mentioned earlier that Annabeth Chase reserves the word “hate” for That Guy Who Stole Her New Highlighters in Fourth Grade and Drew Tanaka, but that’s not entirely true. Annabeth also hates spiders, the scratch of styrofoam against cardboard, and being late. It is unfortunate, then, that her meeting with Percy involves two of those things.

Annabeth usually packs her belongings away carefully at the end of her last class, worried about accidentally creasing her homework or losing a favorite pencil, but today she crams everything into her bag and hurries to Starbucks. She arrives at the coffee shop precisely 10 minutes later, grabbing a clean table by the window so she can see when Percy arrives and spreading out her math homework as she waits. 

Another 10 minutes passes. Annabeth’s already finished a page of the homework, which is about as dry as her destroyed sense of humor right now. A couple other students from Goode are lounging about, sipping iced coffee over their notebooks in some strange pretense of studying, but Percy is nowhere to be found. She leans back in her seat to peer out the window again, trying to spot his messy black hair among the legions of skateboarding students and long chains of cars weaving their way out of the high school parking lot. 

She’s so distracted by her game of Where’s Waldo (which is substantially more difficult, it appears, when you don’t know what Waldo is wearing or even if he’s there at all) that she fails to notice the screech of a chair behind her and the clang of bracelets against a table. It’s only when she hears a voice - quiet but forceful, speaking with a slight drawl of practiced carelessness - that she sneaks a glance behind her. She sees the tight black ringlets of hair out of the corner of her eye and quickly bows her head again to her math.

After all those jokes about Drew’s obsessive Starbucks consumption, Annabeth should have expected to see her here.

To be fair, agreeing to go to Starbucks after school is the third most impulsive thing she’s done this week, all three of which have involved the unfortunately absent Percy Jackson. If she had considered Percy’s proposal a bit more, she might have realized how strange this meeting is (considering they had a real conversation for the first time ever two days ago) or how likely it is that they’d chance upon Drew and her league of giggly gossip girls (or that  _ she’d _ chance upon them, since Percy isn’t there to join in on her fun). She doesn’t even have his contact information or any idea of what they’re supposed to  _ do  _ here. 

This is the dilemma: she can leave and assume that this meeting was all a trick, thereby alerting Student Musical Director Drew Tanaka to her presence, or she can stick around and wait for Percy to maybe show up and hope that Drew doesn’t turn around. On the other hand, going home means doing homework with the distraction of two hyperactive eight-year-olds while staying means doing homework with the distraction of Drew Tanaka. And while she does - as also aforementioned - prefer two screaming boys to Drew’s vocal fry, something in her trusts Percy and decides to stay.

Despite these homework-efficiency considerations, Annabeth ends up spending her time eavesdropping on Drew.

“I really don’t think I’ve done anything wrong,” she hears Drew say over the tap of her acrylic nails on the table.

“ _ She _ does not feel the same way,” says a second voice. It’s airy and gravelly, distinctly unlike a high schoolers’.

It’s Mrs. Gerges, Annabeth realizes. Mrs. Gerges and Drew are sitting at a table at Starbucks, probably talking about Annabeth’s complaints, while Annabeth herself is sitting directly behind them. She leans further down into her papers, trying to bury herself in her jacket as she listens.

“You won’t lose your position, but this is a warning strike, Drew,” Mrs. Gerges is saying. She sighs. “Be respectful. Don’t let it happen again.”

There’s a pause, and then Drew says, “alright.”

There’s another ugly chair screech and she hears something click against a metal seat. “I’ll let you go, but if it happens again, there will be actual consequences.”

Drew says “alright” again, her voice low. Annabeth hears slow footsteps and then the chime of the front door opening, and it’s just Drew sitting quiet, alone, at the table.

Finally, she hears Drew stand up. Drew’s jacket briefly brushes against the back of Annabeth’s chair, causing the latter to freeze, eyes glued to her paper. She hears Drew’s footsteps and the chime of the front door sounds and Annabeth finally raises her head to gaze out the window at Drew’s retreating figure. She watches Drew walk through the parking lot and all the way back to the high school before her strides take her out of Annabeth’s view.

Drew’s absence makes Annabeth aware of Percy’s, again, but he’s still nowhere to be seen, so Annabeth goes back to her old enemy Mr. Riemann and his Sums.

* * *

Annabeth has regretted her choice to come to Starbucks since she arrived, but her regret is only increasing with every time the door opens. If she had an ounce less of self-control, she might march over to the front door, yank off the chimes, and stuff them in the coffee grinder.

It’s been exactly thirty-two minutes since she’s sat down and not one of Percy’s hairs has bothered to make an appearance. She stuffs her math homework back into its folder, shoves it into the deepest crevice of her bag, and pulls out her heavily annotated copy of  _ Hamlet _ . If she’s going to be bothered to stay here for Percy, she’ll at least spend her time doing something she likes.

The door opens again and Annabeth nearly hurls poor Hamlet at the intruder. The person whips their head around the room so quickly that Annabeth can barely make out their features until they pause with eyes locked on hers. It’s Percy, she realizes, and this fact makes her both more and less willing to throw her book at his face.

Percy trips over a “caution, wet floor” sign and gracefully faceplants on her table. Breathing heavily, he squeaks out an “I’m sorry” and manages to right himself in a motion that looks more like the chicken dance.

“You should be,” says Annabeth, giving him her best disappointed stare, honed after eight years with little brothers.

“I’m sorry,” he says, again, still panting. “I know there’s no excuse - please forgive me - I got detention - wasn’t my fault - couldn’t contact you - so sorry.”

Annabeth motions for him to sit down but doesn’t loosen her stare.

“I’m so sorry,” says Percy, because he perhaps thinks that saying it enough times will help Annabeth forgive him. He scrambles onto the chair opposite her. “I would have told you, honestly, but I didn’t have your number.” A pause. “Uh, could I have your number?”

“Smooth, Jackson.”

“I didn’t mean it in that way,” Percy says quickly.

“I know you didn’t,” replies Annabeth, but she doesn’t give it to him. “What did you get detention for?”

“Talking back to Mrs. Dodds.”

“So it  _ was  _ your fault.”

“Well - she deserved it.”

Annabeth’s still a bit upset that Percy made her wait half an hour for something easily avoided if he had just kept his mouth shut, but she also knows Mrs. Dodds and can’t completely blame him. So, because she can’t help herself, she says, “Drew was just here.”

Percy looks like he’s just gotten brain-whiplash, his eyes confused as he blinks rapidly. “I missed her?”

Annabeth laughs at him. “You seem awfully disappointed.”

“What was she here for?” he asks. Then, suddenly - “oh, coffee.”

“Actually, no. She was here with Mrs. Gerges, talking about someone’s complaints about Drew.”

“Someone else complained?”

“I - no, I think she was talking about us.”

“Oh. But I thought she said we should talk to Drew herself?”

Annabeth shrugs. “I guess she changed her mind.”

“Okay,” says Percy, glancing out the window. “She didn’t see you?”

“No, I don’t think so. What, do you think I’m lying to you?”

“No.” Percy sighs. “I’m just - confused. Anyways, maybe Drew won’t be so harsh anymore.” Then he shakes his head. “That’s enough of that - let’s talk about something not Drew-related.”

Percy makes no effort to start conversation, so Annabeth leans her head on her palm and says, “so. Why sax?”

He leans back in his seat, crossing his arms, and gives her a small smile before answering. “I dunno. I wanted to be cool, I guess, and I thought saxophones were cool. I thought that cool kids wore sunglasses inside and backwards baseball caps and played saxophone, and I was like, ‘I wanna be that. I wanna be cool kids.’”

Percy stops, so Annabeth says, “that’s a lot of dedication to being cool.”

He laughs. “I was desperate. But also - I figured out, at some point, that I really liked playing saxophone, and that I was even sort of good at it. And that was what was  _ really  _ cool, because I’d never been good at anything before. But what about you? Why baritone?”

“I like the idea of being the foundation of the band, you know? Like I’m important.”

“That’s it?”

“Well - that, and stubbornness. When we had instrument trials in middle school, our band director said, ‘you’re probably too small to play low brass,” and handed me a flute. And I was like, ‘you know what? Just because you’ve said that, I’m going to play low brass.’”

Percy grins. “You said that to her?”

“I thought it, mostly. I just told him that I really wanted to play low brass, not that it was because of his refusal. But it took a lot of negotiating - I wanted to play tuba, initially, but he insisted against it, so baritone was the compromise.”

“If that guy hadn’t told you that you couldn’t play low brass, what would you have played?”

Annabeth considers this. “I don’t know. I went in liking the more mellow sound of the lower instruments, but I wanted to try them first. I might have chosen baritone anyways.”

“Is that why you wanted to join band?”

“No. I found that I liked that sound when I was doing research about the instruments. I joined because I just needed a good extracurricular. But - kind of like you - I realized that I enjoyed playing baritone, enjoyed playing in a group, and it became more of a hobby than a requirement. But what about you?”

“Oh, it was just the sax thing. I told my mom I wanted to play sax, and she told me to join the band to try it out. What’s your favorite band piece?”

“Holst, 2nd Suite, the march,” she says, immediately. “I love how light and bouncy the beginning is, and then it goes into this flowy euph solo, and they’re both fun to play. You?”

“Jupiter. Every part of that was great. It’s the kind of piece that makes you want to do music forever, for a living. And then you remember how impossibly stressful it is to get a seat in any orchestra.”

“What would you do instead, then?” she asks.

“I don’t know.” He sighs, twisting his legs tightly around the chair legs. “This is the only thing I’m good at, and I’m not good enough at it.”

Annabeth frowns. “That’s not true.”

“It kind of is. What do you want to do?”

She’s not quite willing to let Percy’s self-doubt go yet, but something in his slumped posture makes her answer his question anyways.

“I love music, but I want to be an architect. It’s a similar thing with baritone - I want to have an impact, a solid foundation, to build something permanent. I want to prove to myself that some things can last, because almost nothing does.”

Percy tilts his head, staring unabashedly at her face for a few moments. “That’s - really brave.”

“I guess so. It’s not really so grand, though. Now, it’s just about getting good grades, going to a good school, finding a good internship, maybe.”

He nods. “What schools are you looking at?”

She taps her pencil eraser against her chin. “Harvard. Cornell. They’re my dream schools, I guess.”

“You guess?”

“They seem nice.”

“Yeah?”

“They’re where my parents went.”

“Do you have a preference?”

Annabeth frowns. “Um. Harvard’s a good school, and legacy students have a better chance of getting in, so that’s helpful. But Cornell has a higher ranked architecture program. They’re both about the same distance from here.”

“Yeah?” Percy says, again.

“Cornell’s where my mom went.”

“Is that good or bad?”

“It’s - something.”

There’s an awkward pause, so Annabeth noisily packs away her copy of Hamlet.

“Are there any other schools you like?” Percy asks.

She looks up. “I like Barnard.”

“Where is that?”

“It’s a women’s college that used to be part of Columbia. It’s a liberal arts school, and they have a good architecture program, too.”

“Have you told your parents about Barnard?”

“I haven’t mentioned it. Yet.”

There’s another pause. Annabeth feels like she’s being unnecessarily rude to her parents, so she tries to clarify. “They had a good time at school, and they want me to have the same experience.”

Percy nods but doesn’t continue speaking. They sit together in silence, both looking out the window. The high school parking lot is mostly cleared now. There’s only a couple stragglers, heading back from their after-school activities, walking down the sidewalk. The front door chimes again, the same high, jingly pitch that makes Annabeth want to leave. Checking her watch showily, she stands up.

“I have to go, actually. Big project, you know. This was fun, though.”

Percy stands up also as Annabeth slips her jacket on. “Yeah, okay. I’m sorry I was so late. It was nice talking to you, though,” he says.

They head out together, and Percy opens the door for her with the same exaggerated butler’s bow he’d used at band practice the day before.

As Annabeth brushes past him to the parking lot, Percy lays a careful hand on her shoulder.

“You should tell your parents, you know.”

“What do  _ you  _ know?” she snaps, refusing to stop. Then she lets out a deep breath. “I’m sorry - I didn’t mean - ”

He gives her a one-sided grin. “It’s alright. See you tomorrow?”

Annabeth nods curtly. “Yeah.” Then she stops. “Actually, do you want my number?”

The other side of Percy’s mouth curves up, and now he’s smiling fully. “Sure,” he says, offering his phone.

She types her number in and says goodbye again before hurrying down the sidewalk, back to her car, the chilly wind blowing directly into her eyes. Somewhere behind her, she hears Percy’s footsteps soften until the only thing around her is the rush of the wind and the distant sound of the front door’s chime.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can you tell how much I detest Riemann sums  
> Back to regularly scheduled band rehearsal programming next Saturday, ft. Piper’s arrival!


	5. band practice - friday morning

Annabeth Chase’s favorite way to wake up is gradually coming to, slowly stretching her back, cracking her bones and flickering her eyes open just before the sun rises, so that by the time its cheery self filters through her grey curtains, she’s more or less awake and ready to go. This is an unusual luxury on a school day, and an even more unusual one on a band day, so Annabeth usually settles for shaking herself out of bed as her alarm blares, lying on the floor for ten minutes, and then groggily dressing herself and heading out the door.

As usual, then, she finds herself rolling onto the ground as a particularly grating song plays from her alarm clock. She wonders, briefly, if her brothers have changed her alarm’s radio station to some kind of bizarre genre created for those individuals who enjoy their music more like screaming than actual melody, but also this singer sounds suspiciously like her stepmother Helen and -

Wait.

Annabeth scrambles to her feet. Her left leg is still entangled in her sheets, so she ends up banging her head harshly against her bed frame, and also she can’t really see because she’s not wearing her glasses and also isn’t really awake, but she hurries downstairs nonetheless.

“Annabeth!” yells Helen, attempting to pack two sack lunches while Bobby and Matthew grab onto her arms. “What have you been doing?”

Annabeth squints at the clock. “I just woke up.”

“Just woke up?” Helen cries, swatting at one of the twins. “You’ve got to head to school in 5.”

Helen manages to swat the twins in the direction of Annabeth’s father, who is dazedly eating cereal, half of his milk spilling onto the table as he ladles it into his mouth. Glancing closer at Annabeth’s face, she softens her voice. “What time did you go to bed last night?”

“Uh. 1?”

“1 AM! Why so late?”

“I had homework.”

“You couldn’t have done it yesterday afternoon?”

“I was - out. With a friend.”

Helen frowns. “Piper’s not back yet, is she?”

“She got in this morning.”

“Then who were you out with?”

“Um. You don’t know him.”

Matthew, realizing his father is distracted, gives up trying to get his attention and returns to tugging on Helen’s sleeve. Helen raises an eyebrow. “How do  _ you  _ know him?”

“He’s in the pit with me?”

“What were you doing together?”

Annabeth’s not sure whether to lie and ends up giving a version of the truth. “We were talking about band stuff.”

She frowns again. “Annabeth, you need to be better about managing your time. I’m glad you’re making friends, but you need to do your homework before you go hang out with boys from your band. What are you going to do when you get to college?”

Annabeth sighs, suddenly remembering Percy’s words from yesterday. Normally, she’d conjure up some insult that would leave Helen sighing, but she’s too tired to think. “I know, I know. I won’t do it again.”

Helen looks skeptical but waves Annabeth off. “Alright. Hurry up and head out, okay?”

‘Okay,” says Annabeth. She taps her father on the shoulder and offers him a half-hearted “good morning” before running back up the stairs. She’s halfway down the hallway when she finally hears him say, “Annabeth?” before she slips into her room and slams the door.

* * *

Piper greets her just outside the school’s front door, crushing her in a hug that smells like Bath and Body Works perfume and freshly laundered clothes. Choppy strands of hair are falling out of Piper’s messy braid, her embroidered shirt is heavily wrinkled, her sneakers are caked with mud, and Annabeth, crushed between her friend’s embrace and her baritone case, has never been happier to see her.

“What happened to my friend, Miss-’early-is-on-time-and-on-time-is-late’?” Piper asks, flying to open the door.

Annabeth laughs as she ducks inside. “She slept in today. How was your trip?”

“I’ve already told you,” Piper says, but she continues anyway. “Jane spent the whole time yelling at me. ‘Be a lady, cross your legs!’ ‘No, not at the knee, at the ankle!’ ‘Not that forward, tuck your legs in!’ ‘Stop splaying your elbows out, keep your arms to yourself!’ ‘Don’t touch everything, fold your hands on your lap!’” Piper purses her lips, raising the balls of her cheeks, in an impression of her father’s assistant. “And dad just thanked Jane for being ‘such a great example’ and told me to ‘play nice.’”

Annabeth murmurs her sympathy, running a hand over Piper’s shoulder. Piper looks over and smiles at her as they trudge down the hallway, hazy sleep still flickering over their eyelids.

“And then he said, ‘let’s take a family picture!’ and I was like, ‘okay!’ And of course, I thought Jane would take the picture of us, but  _ no _ , Jane had to be  _ in  _ the picture, and then the lady we asked to take the picture for us  _ recognized _ him and spent the whole time fangirling.” Piper sighs. “I’m sorry. Stupid problems, I know.”

“Piper, it’s fine. They’re  _ your  _ problems, and I want to hear about them.”

But Piper shakes her head. “No, no, that’s enough of me complaining. How’s the pit been? I know Drew hasn’t been treating you very nicely.”

“Of course not, she hates my guts and I hate hers. It’s been terrible - I wish you were there.”

“You wish that torture on me, your friend?”

Annabeth manages a tight smile, wishing that she’d woken up early enough to grab a coffee before school. “You know me, selfish friend. I need somebody to help me cling onto the last bits of my dying sanity.”

“What about Percy?”

What about Percy? Annabeth’s not sure. “He helps, I guess.”

“Out of everybody in the pit, I didn’t think you’d befriend Percy first. I thought you’d go with Jason or somebody that’s less - spontaneous. Are you that desperate without me?” Piper’s joking, but her tone is serious.

“He’s a nice guy,” says Annabeth, and she’s sure of at least that much.

Piper is quiet.

“I’m not friends with him in  _ that  _ way _ , _ ” Annabeth adds.

“I didn’t say you were,” says Piper. “Trust me, I’m sick of romance.”

There’s a pause. Annabeth waits for her to continue.

“Mom’s got a new beau, apparently - I found out in the checkout line of a random drugstore in LA.” Piper shrugs. “I felt weird talking about it over the phone.”

“You don’t have to tell me about everything.”

“I know. But I want to tell you about this.”

Annabeth surges forwards to open the band hall doors for Piper. They’re barely in time for warm-ups, so the hall is already filled with a cacophony of scales and long tones and band music. Even Percy is already there, balancing his saxophone on one bouncing knee as he connects it to his neck strap. She waves Piper goodbye and hurries to her seat.

Mr. Johnson is paging through a variety of battered yellow envelopes, a sign that they’re sight reading more pieces today, so Annabeth skips her usual routine of being distracted by him and heads straight to her own warm-ups. Unfortunately, the one time she manages to be industrious, she’s stopped by Percy, who taps her shoulder, saying something she can’t hear over the tuba, and gestures for her to follow him.

“What?” Annabeth mouths dramatically.

Percy says something else, something about “meet me in the hallway.”

Annabeth frowns. “After band,” she tries to mouth.

Percy shakes his head, his eyebrows furrowed, before heading for the doors. 

Annabeth watches him go, wondering whether to follow him. There’s only five minutes until the downbeat to begin rehearsal, and Annabeth doesn’t want to be caught out of her seat.

Then Percy turns around, seeing Annabeth frozen in her chair, and points at Mr. Johnson, who’s already standing in the hallway.

Oh.

Annabeth hurriedly gets up, setting her horn on her chair, and follows Percy. Mr. Johnson smiles at them, twirling a pencil in his hand. The muted craziness of the warmups from the band hall and Mr. Johnson’s more relaxed demeanor is the only thing differentiating this meeting from the one Wednesday night, and Annabeth’s shoulders instinctively raise as she remembers.

“Don’t worry, you’re not in trouble,” the band director says. “I actually wanted to commend you again on your incredible blending together at rehearsal on Wednesday.” He pauses.

Annabeth mutters a “thanks?” while Percy gives a half-smile. 

“Right.” He taps his pencil against his finger. “I was so impressed by you two that I wanted to give you an opportunity to showcase your skills when we go to contest. We’re going to look at a piece today that you guys open together, and you’ve got to be locked in for it to sound good.

“I know you guys are busy, but it’s the kind of thing that will require some work outside of band. You need to be able to take initiative to get together, work together on it, or it’s not going to sound good. The whole band won’t sound good. I know I can trust you guys, but I want to know if you want to  _ be  _ trusted with this.”

Annabeth can hear Helen in her head - “you need to be better about managing your time!” - and wonders what she’d say about Annabeth agreeing to spend even more time with “boys from band.” She glances over at Percy, who’s bouncing on his heels with an energy that might come from nervousness or excitement or caffeine, she’s not sure.

“We can go over the piece first. You don’t have to decide today. I just wanted to know in case you were adamantly against it, so we wouldn’t read the piece at all.”

“I’m open to it if Percy is,” says Annabeth. Baritone solos are hard to come by and Annabeth’s pride can’t quite give up on this opportunity, so she sends the ball to Percy’s court.

Percy nods. “Sure, I’m up for it, if she is.”

“Right!” says Mr. Johnson, again. “Head back in, we’ll start in a bit.”

Annabeth slips back into the band hall and grabs her horn again, nervously fiddling with her valves. She hears Drew saying “what a  _ disgrace _ !” and considers running to Mr. Johnson to tell him that she feels playing a solo is too much responsibility considering her other commitments, but something in her also believes that she can  _ nail  _ that solo better than anyone else and she  _ wants _ it.

She glances over at Percy, who catches her eye and sends her a thumbs up. Smiling at the gesture, Annabeth sends one back in return, just as Mr. Johnson heads to his podium. 

“Okay!” he says. “Since almost everyone’s here, we’ll go ahead and get started. I’m going to hand some new music out to your section leaders. Don’t mark on it - if it’s not good I’m sending it back to the publisher. Our music budget is already strained.” He glares at one of the percussionists, who’s leaning just slightly forward. “Don’t you  _ dare  _ lean on that timpani, Matt!”

Matt takes three steps back and raises his hands.

“Those timpanis cost me ten thousand dollars,” begins Mr. Johnson, and everyone sighs and and leans back in their chairs.

* * *

By the time everyone gets the new music, they’re tired and their instruments are cold. Annabeth passes out the low brass parts while yawning before she remembers that  _ hey, I have a solo in this _ and quickens her pace. Clambering back onto the risers, she pours over the opening section while Mr. Johnson tells everyone to check their key signature for the fifteenth time. Eventually, though, he raps his baton against his music stand and they’re off.

In the opening duet, tenor sax and baritone exchange the melody and harmony, gradually developing the theme. It’s like playing tennis, and Annabeth - though not particularly excited about the sport - relishes the way she serves the ball with own spin and feels Percy return it in response, until the entire band joins in with a fullness that echoes along all of the walls and she and Percy dissolve into the texture of the group. Something stirs in her, and she’s involuntarily smiling, fighting to keep her lips buzzing.

At some point, they enter a faster section and everything devolves into chaos and no one is quite sure what measure they’re on, but as her band director cuts them off, Annabeth sets her instrument down and lets the smile fill her face.

Mr. Johnson laughs, his baton twirling in his fingers at an alarmingly fast rate. 

“That was good! We kind of lost it there, but I think you guys fit the piece really well. That opening section was really well done. Tenor sax and baritone - great job building off of each other, copying each other’s style, really locking in with each other. What do you think, everyone? Should we do this one?”

As usual, nobody responds, but also no one groans, so he looks to Annabeth, who nods, and Percy, who gives another thumbs up.

“Alright, go ahead and take this one home. Measure your numbers for tomorrow.”

Someone laughs. Mr. Johnson sends him a confused glance and the person shuts up.

* * *

Annabeth’s putting away her baritone when Piper comes by and claps her on the shoulder.

“Mr. Johnson was right,” says Piper, swinging her flute case cheerfully. “You guys sounded amazing together. Like, holy-crap-you-should-win-an-award amazing.”

Annabeth laughs. “Thanks. Care to bestow one upon me?”

“Maybe, sure. I won’t eat all of your fries at lunch today.”

“Wow, what an honor. It must have been incredible.”

“Oh, it was. Experiencing that was worth  _ at least  _ five fries.”

“Seven?” Annabeth asks, bending down to latch her case shut.

“Six,” says Piper, nodding like she’s settled on that valuation. 

“Fine,” Annabeth agrees.

“Hey,” says someone else. She sees a pair of battered Reeboks appear on the ground and bangs her head on her stand trying to look up.

“Don’t be so excited to see me that you destroy your perfect stand,” says Percy.

“This isn’t it,” says Annabeth, rubbing her head.

“Good,” says Percy. He rubs his hands on his pant legs, rocking back and forth on his heels. “Anyways, I just wanted to tell you that, uh, good job with your solo. It sounds nice.”

“Thanks,” says Annabeth, staring at him.

There’s an awkward pause before Piper says, “you, too, Percy. You guys sound great together.”

“Uh, thanks,” says Percy. “Well, I’ve got to go.”

“Right, okay,” says Annabeth. “See you tonight?”

“Yeah,” says Percy, waving despite the fact that he’s literally inches in front of Annabeth. He turns around quickly and runs for the door. Piper watches him go, seemingly entranced.

“What wrong?” Annabeth asks her.

“Nothing,” says Piper after a bit, but her head is tilted like she’s deep in thought. “What was he saying about your perfect stand?”

“Nothing,” echoes Annabeth. “I just have a stand that I save for concerts that I really like. I was showing it to him when we were stuck in the band room on Wednesday.” She shrugs. “It’s hidden in the back corner of the band closet, behind one of the bookshelves.”

Piper laughs. “Oh, okay. That’s cool.”

Annabeth’s mildly offended that Percy and Piper have had nearly the same reaction to her special secret, but she brushes it off again. 

Piper glances at Percy for a moment, who’s making his casual way down the hallway, then back at Annabeth, and smiles a little.

“What’s wrong, Piper?” asks Annabeth, again.

But Piper refuses to answer. “Oh, what do I know? I won’t meddle. Here, let’s go to homeroom.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pipabeth is here and here to stay! I adore their friendship.  
> Now that all the main characters are present and accounted for, things get a bit more dramatic in the next chapter, coming to you next Saturday!


	6. third rehearsal - friday night

Cal grabs Julian’s shoulder, her hair tangled in a heap on the back of her head. “Jules, don’t go to the meeting tomorrow. My dreams, I swear - ” 

But Julian grabs her hand, shoves it off of his shoulder. “Cal - you don’t understand. I’m not weak.” 

“No, Julian,” cries Cal, falling to her knees. “Don’t be a tough guy. Be wise. I know - I feel it in my bones - don’t go. Do the meeting on Zoom or something.” She buries her head in her knees, hands dirty and scraping the tiled floor.

“I am a great man,” begins Julian, standing tall over his wife’s crumpled figure.

“Great men only fall more easily,” says Cal, weeping. She tears at her edge of her skirt and lifts her face, breathing heavily through her half-opened mouth. Her eyes are red and squinting. One hand grasps for Julian’s wrist, holding him back with a firm but shaking grip.

Mr. Johnson cues Octavian for the start of “Cowards.” Then he cues Octavian again. Octavian looks up sleepily before jamming his oboe into his mouth. A quavering duck quack rises from the pit. Out of the corner of her eye, Annabeth sees Drew glare in the direction of the pit and write something down on her notepad.

“Cowards die a hundred times, just waiting for death to come,” sings Julian, stomping around the stage. Drew leans forwards again and motions for him to project more. His forehead turns red and veins pop out of his neck before he cracks the climactic note. Drew sighs dramatically.

Annabeth, playing the same five note figure for the twentieth time, dazedly notices that the performers are slipping off of the beat. Mr. Johnson’s baton is sliding around, defining beats seemingly randomly in the air, as he tries to find the groove. Drew is banging her palm against her thigh as she watches, tight-lipped.

Finally, the verse ends and the lights brighten, indicating the oncoming day, as Declan slowly enters the courtyard. His shoes squeak loudly on the tile. In an attempt to shuffle quietly, he ends up tripping himself and splatting onto the ground. Drew’s stiletto attacks the floor like an angry woodpecker as she continues scrawling in her notebook.

“Sir,” says Declan, who’s recovered enough from his great fall to continue acting. He pokes his head tentatively between the couple while rubbing his sore elbow. “Are you ready for the meeting?”

Julian pries himself out of Cal’s grip and nods as Cal holds a helpless arm out towards her husband.

“What’s the matter?” asks Declan, crouching down to see Cal’s face. One of his shoes lets loose an enormous squeak as he moves, like a windshield wiper when there isn’t any rain. Julian chuckles deep in his throat and gags himself. Drew leans forwards in her seat, frowning deeply.

“Cal - she’s worried by silly dreams, is all.”

“What sort of dreams, ma’am?” Declan asks, leaning in closely.

“My statue, bleeding onto the pavement,” laughs Julian. “And New Yorkers playing in my blood!”

“Oh!” says Declan, standing up rapidly. “Everyone loves you, sir. The people have been crying for you. Your most recent Instagram post got over a million likes!”

He pauses, gets on his knees before Cal, softens his voice. “In fact, I can explain your terrible dreams. Julian’s blood is refreshing blood, and the people are rejoicing at the rebirth of their state. It is a promising dream, ma’am, not an ominous one.”

“Naturally!” says Julian. “See, darling! Of course there’s a rational explanation for all this!”

Declan nods eagerly, too eagerly. “Here, come, sir. I’ve got the limo ready.”

They exit with the melody of  _ squeaky shoes _ and  _ ducky oboe _ cutting through everyone’s tired eardrums. The crew hurries on to change out the backdrops, the lights still brightly illuminating their whispers.

“Lights off!” yells Drew. Someone in the lighting booth screams at the sudden noise and turns the lights up to full saturation. Everyone, blinded, blinks confusedly, before the lights go back down.

By the time Annabeth can see past the bright red fireworks exploding directly before her eyeballs, she sees someone approaching Drew and waving towards backstage, talking eagerly. Drew slackens her shoulders as she listens, and Annabeth can nearly see her eyes rolled back, her lips pursed. Eventually, though, she sits up straight and waves her hand.

“Fine, fine,” she says. “You sure?”

The guy nods enthusiastically. “Absolutely. She’s got it.”

“Right, she’s in. We don’t have time for flubbing though, alright?” 

The guy nods again and hurries backstage.

The lights rise again - this time, thankfully, more gently - and Priscilla stands with her servant Luke in the middle of the stage, holding the edge of her crumpled blouse in her hands. A dim spotlight appears over her and she gasps quietly.

“Uh,” she says, looking over at Luke.

“Uh,” answers Luke, glancing everywhere except Priscilla’s face.

“Line?” whispers Priscilla, weakly.

Drew clears her throat loudly. “‘Go to the meeting, hurry.’”

“Uh. Go to the meeting, hurry,” says Priscilla, hurriedly. “Uh, tell me - tell me what’s happening. Uh, fast!”

Luke gives an overemphasized bow and speeds off of the stage, leaving Priscilla cowering in the presence of the burning hot spotlight and Drew’s burning hot glare.

The soothsayer, who also plays Declan, enters, placing his feet down one after another. Annabeth can almost see the words  _ don’t trip _ running through his head.

“Miss,” he says, “Julian’s not at the meeting yet. I’m going to watch for him.”

“What,” says Priscilla. She might be blowing the scene, but she’s also pulling off the best confused face in the history of high school musical acting, Annabeth thinks. Not High School Musicals, but high school musicals, lowercase - although the former is probably true, too. “Why,” she clarifies, eventually.

“Oh, I have something to say to him,” he says, tilting his head at Priscilla.

“Oh,” says Priscilla. She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “Nothing bad, I hope?”

“Not now, but maybe in the future.” He winks and tips his hat to her. “Well, I’ve better go.” He, too, sprints off stage, leaving Priscilla looking out at the audience as the lights slowly fade.

The pit begins the segue to Act III and Annabeth catches a glimpse of Drew’s hard expression, immediately feeling sympathy for Priscilla.

The music dissolves into the heavy stomp of footsteps as the procession, Julian at its head, enters the stage. At the end of the procession is a young girl who looks barely thirteen, her face caked with dramatic makeup and mouth fixed into a very slight smile. She’s wearing Cassie’s costume, the fabric of her pantsuit legs scraping against each other deliberately as she drags behind the rest. As they stop and take their positions, she relaxes, one hip easily flared, but her eyes are narrowed on Julian’s back, her slight smile unchanging.

The girl - Gwen’s replacement, the reason why that guy had been so excited to speak to Drew (and might have actually been the first person to feel that way about such a conversation), Annabeth realizes - notices her staring and gives her and raises one eyebrow, never breaking character.

Annabeth would die as brutal a death as Julian is about to experience if she had one ounce of that confidence in the afterlife. 

* * *

As soon as the cast finishes their bows and the curtains close, Drew springs upwards. “Right!” she yells, clapping her hands emphatically. “I’ve got my notes. Get over here.”

Everyone runs to make a circle (read: amoebic form) around Drew. Annabeth’s not sure if they’re rushing so that they don’t disappoint Drew, or if they’re just making sure they’re not the unfortunate soul standing directly before her neatly lipsticked, fiercely pursed pout.

“This is our second-to-last rehearsal. We  _ cannot _ be missing lines. We cannot be having costume issues. We cannot be having major problems. Are you forgetting everything as soon as you walk out that door? Turn your brains on!  _ I _ cannot do anything with this. You guys are failing. The entire second act was a disaster!” says Drew, whipping her head around the circle as if she can see the second act personified, peeking its mischievous head through the windows between cast members. “We just fell apart and  _ nobody _ had their wits about them to keep it together!”

Everyone nods.

“Declan!” screams Drew, a murderer selecting her first victim, flecks of venomous saliva flying from her mouth. “What’s going on with your shoes? They weren’t like this before.”

The poor man playing Declan opens his mouth, but Drew beats him to it. “I don’t need to hear an explanation, just fix it! Julian, don’t you  _ dare _ laugh in that scene! Get into character. You hear me?”

This is apparently a rhetorical question, because she plunges on.

“Declan, don’t think I’m done with you, yet! You seem too genuine when you speak to Julian - you’re a traitor, act like one! Be obvious in your intentions! Julian is too blinded by his pride to care and Cal is too hysterical. Flatter him!”

Declan nods furiously.

“Cassie,” screams Drew. Cassie immediately stands up from where she’s been sitting, cross-legged, on the floor. “You did alright today.” She pauses. “For your first time.”

Cassie says, “thanks!’ and flounces back down.

“I’m not done with you yet!”

“You have too much spunk,” says Drew, tossing and catching her pencil between her hands, her notebook tucked under one arm. “Cassie has doubt, has depth as a character. She’s not all evil-villain.”

Cassie opens her mouth, looks around, and shuts her mouth again, nodding instead.

“Priscilla!” says Drew, rapidly turning pages in her notebook. “Where’s our Priscilla?”

The entire cast is silent.

Priscilla emerges slowly from backstage. “Here. I’m sorry,” she mumbles, wringing her hands.

“Julia,” says Drew, addressing the girl by her real name. Everyone is shocked into silence. “This is inexcusable. You cannot be missing lines this late in the game. Absolutely cannot. Do you want this role? Can you handle the role?”

“Yes, ma’am,” says Julia, forcefully.

“I’m not sure you can,” says Drew. “Our first performance is in three days. I don’t know that I can trust you. What if you let everyone down?”

Julia stares. “I won’t,” she whispers, shaking her head slightly. 

“Drew, I think that’s enough,” says Mrs. Gerges, standing up from her position across the aisle from Drew. “I’m sure we’ll be okay by Monday. Get your mistakes out now, right? Save your golden ticket for next week.”

“I have other notes,” says Drew.

“Then go over them,” answers Mrs. Gerges. “We’re done with this topic.”

Drew clears her throat again and shuffles through her pages noisily.

Turning back towards the pit, Mr. Johnson sighs. “I don’t think she needs us right now. Get some water, stretch, and be back in 5. Go, hurry. If she says anything, I’ll relay it to you after.”

Annabeth hurries to set down her horn and grab her water bottle as everyone in the pit quietly shuffles out. Percy strides by her and offers a “hey.”

“Hey,” Annabeth replies, before taking a quick swig.

“Well,” says Percy, his fingers busily tapping on his pant leg, “that was intense.”

“Yeah. I felt - poor Julia.”

Percy sighs, cracking his knuckles noisily. “I almost said something, if Mrs. Gerges hadn’t.”

“You’re braver than me, then.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Maybe more stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” says Annabeth, looking at Percy’s blank face.

“I’m a little bit stupid.”

Annabeth shrugs. “So is everyone.”

His eyebrows furrow. “Even you?” 

“Well, yeah,” says Annabeth, her voice thick. Percy watches her quietly, waiting for her to go on. “Sometimes I get kind of tired of everyone thinking I’m just  _ smart _ . Like - I appreciate it, you know? But I also wish people thought of me as being human, first.”

“If it helps any, I think you’re a great human.”

“But what have I done?” Annabeth answers, quietly. “I haven’t done anything for you. I’ve barely talked to you.”

“We’re talking now,” says Percy, waves his arms around emphatically. “I like talking to you. Sometimes you don’t look like it, but you’re really good at listening. It’s nice to know somebody here. To have somebody to rant to when Drew’s being a - well, I won’t say, but. You know.”

“Thanks,” says Annabeth. “I, um. Like talking to you, too.”

“It would be - lonely. Without you.”

“Yeah,” says Annabeth.

There’s a pause.

“Right,” says Percy. He peers around the corner of the hallway at no one, then shrugs. “Uh, let’s go back.”

It’s barely been two minutes and Percy is hardly one to worry so much about being late, but Annabeth figures the very least she can do is respect his apparent anxiety. She nods and they slip back into the hellfire of rehearsal.

* * *

Annabeth’s cooling down her lips by doing lip slurs on her mouthpiece when Percy taps her shoulder.

“Um, I’m heading out now, so - see you soon?”

Annabeth turns to him and nods, still playing.

“Are you coming to Pedro’s after rehearsal tomorrow?”

“Pedro’s?” Annabeth asks, taking off the mouthpiece.

“Yeah, the pizza place over on - ”

“I know what Pedro’s is, Percy. Am I supposed to be there tomorrow?”

Percy shrugs, leaning back against the piano. “I mean, if you want. The theater kids are meeting there for a late lunch and a couple people from the pit are coming, too.”

There’s literally only six people in the pit. Annabeth’s hand grips one of her curls and twists it, tightly. “Nobody told me about it.”

“That’s okay! You don’t have to reserve a spot or anything. You can just show up. We’d love to have you!”

“No. No, that’s alright.” She drops her mouthpiece into her case and latches it, firmly. “Um. I have to go now, see you.”

“You okay?” asks Percy, laying a light hand on her shoulder.

She shakes her head. “Forget it. Bye.”

Grabbing the handle of her case, she shoves it up roughly, nearly knocking over her chair. She’s rushing out of the door when someone taps her on the shoulder.

“Hey, um,” says the girl, prying a clip out of her hair with her other hand. “You play the tuba, right?”

Annabeth groans. “No.”

“Oh,” says the girl. “I thought I saw you. I must have seen somebody else, I’m sorry. But all of you guys in the pit sound amazing!”

“It’s a euphonium, Juniper,” says another girl, who’s cleaning up makeup pallets.

“How do you know?” asks Annabeth.

The second girl, the one at the makeup table, shrugs. “I’m good friends with someone in band.” She extends her hand, which is covered with eyeshadow and lipstick swatches. “I’m Rachel, by the way.”

“Oh,” says Annabeth. “I’m Annabeth, and actually, it’s - ”

“ _ You’re _ Annabeth,” says Rachel.

“Yeah, I’m Annabeth. Why is that important?”

Rachel just shrugs. “It’s not. I’ve just heard a lot about you from my friend in band.”

“Who do you know in band?”

Rachel shrugs again. “Percy.”

“How do you know Percy?” asks Annabeth, again.

She frowns. “Why are you so curious? Are you a stalker?”

“She doesn’t look like a criminal,” says Juniper, hoisting herself onto the prop table.

“What do you know about what criminals look like? Are you one?” Annabeth asks.

Juniper laughs. “I’ve seen plenty of slime tutorials, you know.”

“They’re not  _ that _ bad,” says Annabeth, mostly to be contrary, because she’s seen enough slime from her younger brothers to have nightmares about satisfying compilations.

“That’s not - ” begins Juniper, but she’s cut off.

Percy has poked his head around the backstage partition on his way out and seen Rachel, a smile spreading across his face. “Hey, Rach!” he says, waving eagerly. “I tried to catch you before rehearsal started, but you were already busy.”

Annabeth tries to find his eye but he seems completely distracted.

“Oh, hi, Percy!” returns Rachel, tucking a wild curl behind her ear. “It’s great to see you! You sound amazing. It’s so different with the whole band!”

Percy nods. “It is, isn’t it? I was wondering - who’s the girl playing Cassie today? She’s really good.”

“Lacey,” says Rachel. “She’s a freshman in the ensemble.”

“Wow,” says Percy. “She’s giving Gwen a run for her money.” 

Annabeth hasn’t eaten in seven hours and she might actually throw up.

She’s just about to squeeze by Percy, who seems completely oblivious to her turmoil, when he turns his head to her. “Hey, Annabeth - I hope you’ll come tomorrow?”

She shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so. Have fun with Rachel.”

Percy turns to follow her out, but she bangs the door shut behind her. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I actually adore Rachel so she’ll be nice here! To be fair, in canon, she’s pretty nice - she’s just attracted to Percy which, I am too, so.  
> Saturday rehearsal shenanigans arrive next Saturday, on the first (and last) update that will actually happen on the same day of the week that it’s posted! See you then!


	7. fourth rehearsal - saturday morning

Annabeth Chase has a number of bad habits. Losing her temper. Biting her nails. Screaming at precisely the resonance frequency of a glass window whenever she spots a spider within a six foot radius of her. Reading too much into what people say.

It’s that last one that bothers her now, stretching her muscles as her brothers’ squeals from downstairs fragment her sleepy thoughts. Her water bottle, partially full from last night, is sitting on her nightstand. She grabs it, cold in her palm, and the fading fingers of last night squeeze her heart.

_ I think you’re a great human. _

_ It would be lonely without you _ .

She forces herself to take a sip of water, wash out the taste of sleep in her mouth.

Her own voice, quiet and misguided, echoes in her mind.  _ Sometimes I get kind of tired of everyone thinking I’m just  _ smart _. Like - I appreciate it, you know? But I also wish people thought of me as being human, first. _

When she said that she wanted people to stop thinking of her as only  _ smart _ , she didn’t mean that she wanted people (namely, Percy Jackson) to think of her as  _ stupid _ .

Annabeth rushes to the bathroom to brush her teeth, trying to scrub the memory from her mind with the harsh, messy strokes of her toothbrush. Returning to her room, she grabs her backpack - packed yesterday night with music and homework and a couple books - and horn.

Downstairs, Bobby and Matthew are each holding a bowl of corn flakes from their perches on the countertop, kicking their legs as they munch.

“Your mom’s sleeping in,” her father says, absentmindedly grabbing one of the twins’ swinging ankles as he peers over a book.

“She’s not my mom,” says Annabeth, digging through the pantry.

Her dad grunts in response.

Annabeth manages to dig up a stale cinnamon bagel and, praying that the white fuzz collecting on the bottom is flour, pops it in the toaster. 

“How’s school?” her dad tries, after a pause.

“It’s alright.” She pauses.

“Your - Helen was saying that you’ve been staying up late to get schoolwork done. Everything okay?”

“Yup. Just peachy.”

“I know it can be hard to manage your time sometimes. You’ve got a lot on your plate.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m fine, dad.”

“If you ever need to talk, you know we’re here, right?”

_ No _ , Annabeth thinks. “Yeah,” she says.

“You know, Annabeth, I get what it’s like to be young. You want to do everything. You think you can do everything. You know you can’t, right? Sometimes - ”

“I’m managing myself just fine,” Annabeth interjects, pulling out her half-toasted bagel.

“Annabeth,” he says, wiping his mouth on a napkin. “Sometimes - ”

“Sorry, dad,” she says, turning away. “Gotta go. Nice talk.”

She hears him sigh. “Where are you going, again?”

Annabeth grits her teeth and faces him again from the hallway. “Rehearsal. Musical’s next week, remember?” She lifts her baritone case.

“Right.” He stands up. “Have fun. Wait, when will you - ”

She shuts the door before he can say anything else.

* * *

In contrast to Annabeth’s bad habits, her good habits (punctuality, for instance) rarely get her into trouble. Until today, at 8:27 AM, when she tugs at the doors of the band hall and they don’t open.

And, sure. Maybe she shouldn’t have expected that the doors would be unlocked an hour before she was really supposed to be there but technically she’s only thirty minutes early because call time is 9:30 and everyone knows you’re expected to be there thirty minutes before call time even if half of these incompetent fools don’t stick their toes through the doorway until Mr. Johnson is halfway up the podium and shouldn’t a teacher be here already and  _ crap _ is that the click of high heels?

It is.

“Good  _ morning _ , Annabeth,” says Drew. 

“Good morning, Drew,” she replies, tugging a few more times at the door handle for good measure. She mutters  _ open sesame _ under her breath, experimentally. The door gives no response.

“You’re in a hurry for 8 in the morning,” says Drew, tilting her head. Her expression is carefully posed, innocence dancing in her eyes.

“I have things to do besides loitering in hallways and bossing people around.” Another tug. Nothing happens.

Drew sniffs and fans her face like she’s an eighteenth century lady dealing with an irresponsible servant. “God, I can smell your pettiness from over here.”

Annabeth very gracefully squawks like a chicken at this insult. “My pettiness?”

“Oops, sorry. It was just your BO.”

“I think it’s the fumes from your own rotting ego.”

“Oh, Bethy. What did I do to deserve such flattery?”

“I don’t know, Drew. Other than witnessing you be a jerk to literally everyone, I can’t imagine what warranted it.”

“Oh,  _ poor  _ baby, stop  _ whining _ to me. What, am I your mommy? I didn’t know you were that desperate for one.”

Oh.

Annabeth’s mouth is already dry by this point, so it’s probably a scientific miracle that she manages to choke on her own saliva. Because here’s the thing: Drew’s always been petty, but her insults have always been petty, too. They’ve never shot Annabeth in the heart and left her wit gasping for air.

_ It’s over now, Annabeth _ , she thinks, cursing Star Wars and memes and her existence.  _ Drew has the high ground. _

“I’m hardly the one whining,” Annabeth returns, but her hesitation has ended their tennis rally of a conversation. Forced carelessness hangs between them until the hallway door opens and Mr. Johnson strides through.

He unlocks the doors and Annabeth dumps her things on the band hall floor, refusing to look back out of the doorway. She supposes it’s a victory, but she’s not sure if it’s against Drew or herself.

* * *

Annabeth’s just finished warming up when she hears someone coming down the hallway.

It’s Percy. She can tell by the fast, irregular rhythm of his footsteps and the banging of a strap against his instrument case. She hates that she knows that. She hates that today, of all days, Percy decides to turn over a new leaf and not arrive just as the second hand twitches past 9:30.

After hurriedly grabbing a cloth from her case, she engages herself in polishing every square inch of tubing as Percy enters the room, his case crashing noisily against the door. She watches the distorted reflection of her face in the shiny brass of her baritone, hears him walk behind her.

“Annabeth?”

Annabeth polishes harder, the warmth of his body by her side reminding her of last night. They’re the only two people in the band hall again, and as his voice echoes, she feels startlingly alone.

“Annabeth. I’m really sorry about yesterday. I guess - I didn’t think. I never think. You know that.”

“It’s fine,” she breathes. It isn’t really, but with the fire of Drew’s taunts and her father’s disinterest brewing, she doesn’t want it to become any worse.

“No, Annabeth - I get it. I know it was rude of me not to invite you to Pedro’s as soon as I found out - I made it feel like we were friends and then I just - dropped the ball.” He thumps his case on the ground as he says this, the hard clatter shaking Annabeth’s resolve.

When she doesn’t respond, he continues. “It was my fault, Annabeth. I’m really sorry. I talked to my mom - ”

He talked to his  _ mom _ . About  _ her _ . When was the last time Annabeth talked to her mom about anything? She shoves the polishing cloth on a pocket of her case and stands up, too fast. She feels dizzy, conflicting words filling up her chest until something spills out.

“Oh, not you too,” she says, everything blurring - with tears? Rage? Frustration? “Shut up about your mom already.”

Some part of Annabeth’s consciousness registers this as unfair, but it’s buried somewhere deep within herself, and again she turns around without looking back.

* * *

At the end of rehearsal, Mrs. Gerges gives a few closing words and dismisses everyone. It’s a duty that Drew normally holds - and proudly accompanies with increasingly creative threats of bodily harm should the performers arrive late to the next rehearsal - and the fact that Mrs. Gerges is awake and giving orders breaks Annabeth from her own stupor.

She tiredly tries to think back through the rehearsal. Has she heard from Drew much today? Drew’s voice readily echoes in Annabeth’s mind, as if she’s heard it a thousand times in the past few hours, but she can’t remember Drew stopping rehearsal every five minutes to critique the way someone’s holding their cup of iced coffee.

She’s reached her arm out to tap Percy’s shoulder, about to ask if Drew’s been uncharacteristically quiet this morning, before she remembers. As she retracts her arm and begins to stuff away her music, she wishes she could whip out her pencil case, erase and rewrite the past few days.

“Hey, Annabeth,” says Percy, and she looks up to find him leaning over her stand. “I get it if you’re mad, but you should still come to Pedro’s. I promise I won’t talk to you if you don’t want me to.” He waves at his mouth. “Not a word will escape these lips.”

Annabeth sighs, looks at him skeptically. “Don’t overexert yourself.”

Percy smiles a little at that. “Does that mean yes?”

Rachel appears suddenly, a couple of makeup palettes under her arm. Percy’s smile widens completely at the sight of her. “Hey, Perce,” she says, clapping him on the shoulder. “You guys sound great.” She nods at Annabeth. “You, too.”

“Thanks,” Annabeth returns, tightly. “And thanks, but no thanks.”

“You sure?”

Annabeth stops in the middle of nodding. She wants Percy to ask again, to fight for her to come. She wants somebody to  _ care _ .

“That’s fine,” says Rachel, grabbing Percy’s hand. “She doesn’t have to go if she doesn’t want to.”

Annabeth grimaces. “I can’t come. I already promised that I was coming home for lunch. With my  _ family _ .”

“Okay,” says Percy. Is he disappointed? She can’t tell.

“Have fun with your family!” says Rachel.

“I will,” says Annabeth. She won’t.

* * *

“Annabeth?” asks Helen from the kitchen. Annabeth, slamming the door shut, hears the scrape of a kitchen stool and tugs her shoes off forcefully. “Where were you?”

“Rehearsal ran late,” Annabeth grunts, lining her shoes up with the wall neatly to avoid Helen’s face. Standing up, she sees Bobby and Matthew behind Helen, wiping their mouths on their matching blue sleeves as they run to a pile of Legos tumbled in a corner.

“We’ve already started eating because we thought maybe you’d gone out to eat with your friends,” says Helen.

“It looks like you’ve already finished,” points out Annabeth. “And no, I didn’t.”

“You didn’t answer my texts.”

“I was driving.”

“You couldn’t check your phone before you left?”

“I was trying to get home.”

“You couldn’t check your phone?”

“No.”

“Annabeth, are you alright?” asks Helen, running a hand through her hair.

“I’m  _ fine _ , thanks.”

She follows Helen back into the kitchen and grabs a serving of the cold spaghetti still sitting on the kitchen counter. She’s heading to her room to eat when Helen says, “actually, your father and I are bit - worried about you. We wanted to talk to you about something.” Helen nods at Frederick, prods him in the shoulder where he’s carefully wiping his fingers with a napkin. “Right, Frederick?”

“Annabeth,” he says, nodding, “sit down.”

Annabeth sits down, dropping her plate of cold spaghetti with a clatter.

“You’re not in trouble,” he adds. He and Helen exchange a glance.

Annabeth frowns into the silence. “What is it, then?”

“Look, sweetheart,” says Frederick, leaning heavily on his elbows. “You’ve been spending a lot of time with this musical thing and we feel like maybe it’s forcing you to sacrifice more important things.”

“What more important things?”

“Your schoolwork - ”

“My grades are fine.”

“Your health,” interjects Helen. “You can’t be going to bed early in the am all the time - ”

“That was once.”

“ - you need to take care of yourself, Annabeth. I’m worried about you. We are.” She pats Frederick’s hand soothingly.

_ We are _ . Even after ten years, she feels strange hearing  _ we _ from Helen’s voice, seeing them embrace in the same way she remembers her parents doing in the bright, hazy memories of her childhood. Her father takes her silence as agreement and continues less carefully.

“You have to learn how to prioritize, Annabeth. You have a limited amount of time - you need to spend it wisely. Going to bed early, getting your schoolwork done - that’s more important than practicing for your musical.”

“The musical  _ is _ important,” says Annabeth, thinking of Percy.

“I’m not denying that. I’m just saying - you’re ready for the musical. You can always practice more. You can always be more ready. But when you have a limited amount of time, you need to spend that time doing the most important things.”

Annabeth stares down at her congealing noodles. “I get it. I get it, okay? I won’t spend my time with  _ boys in band _ anymore, alright?”

Helen shakes her head. “Darling, that’s not what we’re thinking of.”

“It  _ is _ ,” Annabeth insists, gripping the cold edge of the countertop. “I get it.”

Helen sighs, and the warm clouds of disappointment floating on her breath linger between them for a moment. “If you want to spend time with your  _ friends _ ,” she says, “that’s okay. We’re worried about you taking on too many commitments and losing sight of the things that really matter.”

As if Annabeth’s dad had even realized that his daughter’s  _ in _ a musical until this morning, or as if Helen feels anything other than tired frustration when she sees Annabeth’s face.

“This does matter,” says Annabeth. “Just because I want to do architecture doesn’t mean I can’t do music, too.” 

“And we do too! We care about the musical! We want you to be happy. And if you’ve agreed to do it, sure, you’ve got to follow through.”

“So?”

“We’re not trying to send you subliminal messages. We’re not criticizing. We’re just telling you that you need to be careful with how you spend your time.”

“Why can’t you just  _ trust _ me to get things done? When have I ever not finished my work?”

Her father says, “we do trust you. But it’s your junior year. Your grades are important. You need to have priorities.”

“You keep saying that. What do you want me to do?”

Helen just shakes her head again. “I don’t want you to feel pressured - ”

But pressure is all Annabeth feels right now. She slips off the kitchen stool, trying to control her breathing, this morning’s feelings flooding back into her, like she’s settling into a too-familiar blanket of frustration.

“I’m sorry,” she says, more because she needs to say something than because she really feels apologetic, and heads up the stairs. She collapses in the upstairs hallway before she reaches the room, and as she finally lets herself cry, she hears Helen scraping her lunch into the trash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yikes guys sorry i was gone for so long  
> but now i'm back! band's not much better off now than when i left a couple months ago, so what better time to dream of the good ol' days?  
> things get more dramatic from here on out - thanks for your patience and the next update is coming out soon!


	8. band practice - monday morning

Annabeth usually rolls her eyes at the melodrama of a high-pitched sigh, the kind that sounds like a Victorian woman asking for her smelling salts. But as she enters Piper’s car, she indulges herself in a particularly dramatic one. 

She waits for the “you alright?”, the sympathetic eyes, but they never come. Piper snakes an arm around Annabeth’s torso and rests her head on her shoulder. The choppy flyaways from her long braid tickle Annabeth’s arms, the bright, herbaceous scent of her shampoo clearing Annabeth’s senses.

Early morning meetings are a tradition that started in their younger days in lonely homes, an opportunity to be alone together. As little kids, Annabeth and Piper had spent them hidden under the playground slide, but nowadays they enjoy the privacy of Piper’s car. This morning, they’re parked at the school over an hour before homeroom, the sun’s light just a soft gleam at the horizon. It’s chilly out and the seats are leather and heated, so Annabeth burrows herself into her jacket and presses her body against the warmth. Piper turns on the car radio and the quiet, crackly sound covers the hum of her car’s motor.

“So,” says Piper, “tell me everything. What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” says Annabeth, and this is mostly true. She tries to think of where to begin. Advice comes in the form of Julie Andrews’ voice echoing in her head ( _ Let’s start at the very beginning! A very good place to start! _ ), but regardless of how good a place it is to start, she’s not really sure where the beginning is. There’s the talk with Dad and Helen. The Pedro’s Debacle. Rachel. Drew.

Athena.

_ Percy _ .

“I don’t know,” Annabeth repeats, and she finds herself saying, “I guess Drew’s just being a jerk.”

Piper glances her way, fingers playing with the radio dial. “Anything in particular?”

A pause. “I got stuck in the hallway with her Saturday morning,” she says, replaying the day in her head. “We were teasing each other for a bit. Like we always do. And then she brought up Ath - my mom.”

Plucky harpsichord fills the car and Piper stops turning the dial.

She continues. “And it was weird. Because - of course she  _ knows _ . She probably laughs about it at the dinner table every night. But it felt so wrong. She mentioned Athena and I just froze.”

She freezes again, now, with the memory.

“Of  _ course  _ it’s wrong,” says Piper. She grabs Annabeth’s hand. “If anyone - ”

“But she was right,” says Annabeth, her voice fading away as she says the last word.

“Listen to me, for once - ” 

“I’m always listening to you - ”

“For  _ once _ , darn it. If anyone understands, it should be her. She knows she went too far and she’s shown that she doesn’t care. And you know what? You’re not responsible for what she said.”

“You don’t even know what she said!”

“And you don’t have to tell me. I know it hurt you. I know it was uncalled for. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

The plucky harpsichord stops its playing. There’s a little silence in the car that makes Annabeth involuntarily turn away.

“Annabeth,” says Piper, turning Annabeth’s chin back towards her with a finger, “I know you want to be better than this, and that’s okay. But you’re just a hormonal teenager sometimes, and that’s okay, too.”

Annabeth frowns but doesn’t respond. 

And it’s strange. By all metrics this is a dreadful conversation, but there’s something reassuringly familiar in complaining about family to Piper. It’s like - although things were bad when they met and they’re not much better now, it’s comforting to know that constancy exists somewhere, even if it’s with lukewarm coffee in a too-fancy car that Tristan McLean gifted to buy Piper off last year. 

“There’s - other things,” begins Annabeth, because even if her emotions tell her to shut her mouth and ignore everything, her wisdom knows that either she pukes it all out now or she actually throws up in band rehearsal today. She waits for Piper to slowly push it out of her, anyway, because that’s the way they always are. 

But Piper doesn’t say anything, just clicks off the radio. She’s lost in thought, staring at the flyaways from her braid in the rearview mirror.

“Are you alright?” Annabeth asks. Her concern makes the tone of her voice sharp, harsh against the dull purr of the car’s engine.

But Piper shakes her head. “Don’t change the topic. I’m okay, okay?”

“Just okay?”

“I’m fine."

“Just fine?”

She leans her head back, closes her eyes. “Drop it.”

Annabeth obeys. 

“What were you going to say?” asks Piper, after a pause.

“Helen,” says Annabeth, and she means to say more but then doesn’t.

“Is she being nosy again?”

Annabeth sighs. “I guess so. She brought Dad into it, too. When I got back from rehearsal on Saturday, they’d already eaten without me and then they sat me down and said we needed to talk and then she and Dad said a whole bunch about how I need to manage my time better and have priorities and they kept implying that I’m spending too much time with band things. And I don’t even really know what they want me to do. I just - she thinks she  _ knows _ but she  _ doesn’t _ . And I don’t know, either.”

Annabeth’s not sure she formed a single cohesive thought in all of her ramblings, but Piper responds anyways. “But it’s not like you’re sacrificing your grades to be in band. And you  _ like _ music. If anything, having an outlet would help you to better manage yourself.”

“Exactly. And I kept trying to ask what they wanted, and they wouldn’t say. They don’t  _ trust  _ me. I just need them to trust me.”

“I know,” says Piper. There’s nothing else she can say.

“Can we talk about something else?” Annabeth asks, watching a couple cars begin to trickle into the parking lot. “Is everything okay with you and your parents?”

But Piper shakes her head again. “I - Annabeth, I really just don’t want to talk about it.”

“Not yet?”

Piper opens her mouth, then closes it. “No,” she says, finally. “Tell me about you and Percy.”

The truth is that Annabeth’s been especially quiet about Percy to Piper. Because even if thinking about her mother hurts, at least she knows  _ why  _ it hurts. Percy is uncharted territory in her mind, confusing in a way that makes her heart hurt along with her head. Annabeth usually finds solace in untangling complicated problems, in scribbling down her feelings until the lines of pen on the pages of her journal smoothes out her mind, but this problem is too sensitive to put in ink. She feels out of control with Percy - out of control of him, of their relationship, of herself.

She knows Piper wouldn’t press her to talk about anything, that she could just push off the conversation for later the same way Piper’s doing now. But something about Piper’s demeanor tells her that her friend desperately needs a distraction, so she plunges on.

“Percy’s being weird,” she says. “I don’t know if he’s angry or upset or if he just doesn’t care.”

“Maybe it’s just Percy being Percy,” says Piper.

“I guess so.” What is Percy like? She tries to think about Percy the way she always has, the boy with unbrushed hair and lanky legs and crooked smile, the kind of person that shows up late to rehearsals and plays with too much vibrato and whispers sarcastic jokes about everything Mr. Johnson says until he gets yelled at for talking in rehearsal. The sort of guy who tries to play multiple saxophones at once and scribbles notes on other people’s music with a dark, unsharpened, gnawed-on pencil, who closes his eyes when he gets too into the music instead of watching the conductor. He doesn’t ever care, and yet he always does. Annabeth feels out of control with him, she thinks, because he’s always out of control.

Annabeth likes control. And now both Percy and her parents are pulling it away from her, pulling in completely opposite directions, playing tug-of-war with the rope of her sanity over a pool of her hopes and dreams and fears.

“What happened?” asks Piper, quietly.

“I guess it started Friday,” she says. “A bunch of people were going to Pedro’s after Saturday’s rehearsal to celebrate the end of practices. And Percy invited me to go.”

She pauses, and when she starts again, her tone turns petulant. She hates it. “I guess - I was upset because I thought we were in it together, you know? But he had talked to everybody else before me and he was just so  _ flippantly _ like ‘oh, a bunch of people from the pit are going!’ like everyone else knew about it before me and I just felt so  _ alone _ . And I thought - I thought things were finally different with him.”

Piper is quiet for a long time, before she says, “we’re all alone, aren’t we? It’s just you and me, all over again.”

It’s true, Annabeth thinks. The parking lot is filling up now, backpacks and chatter and skateboards and parents wielding coffee that hide the yellow-red sky. There’s little groups congregating by the doors, friends swinging arms around their friends’ necks, laughter echoing, tinny and distant through the car’s doors. And there’s her and Piper, half-awake and jittery and nauseous all at the same time, curled into a car at the far side of the lot.

“I have to see him in band today,” Annabeth says. “And things are so weird between us.”

“I’ll be there, too,” says Piper. “Things are okay between us, right?”

Annabeth’s not sure whether this is a rhetorical question or not, so she says, “yeah. Of course.”

Then she continues, “there’s more, though. I turned him down, obviously. So he came by on Saturday to sort of apologize, I guess. And I sort of blew up at him, because Drew and I had just talked, and things already weren’t great with my parents, and I was just in a bad mood. And then we didn’t really talk, after that.”

“Do you think he’s mad at you because he didn’t ask again?”

“No, he asked again. And then I guess Rachel sort of convinced him that I didn’t want to go, so he left.”

Piper frowns. “Rachel?”

“She’s a - a friend of Percy’s. She does hair and makeup, I think.”

“Oh,” says Piper.

“Yeah,” says Annabeth. “She and Percy were awfully touchy-feely, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh,” says Piper. Then she says, “so what did she say to him?”

“Percy was in the middle of inviting me, and she was sort of like, ‘oh, she doesn’t have to go if she doesn’t want to!’ And then sort of dragged him away.”

“In a passive-aggressive way?”

“I - I don’t know.”

Piper breathes out slowly. “I mean, take everything I say with a grain of salt. Possibly two or even three. Like, maybe she shouldn’t have tried to speak for you. But maybe she was just trying to be nice, Annabeth.”

“I don’t know,” says Annabeth, skeptically. “She’s just so  _ clingy _ with Percy whenever I’m around. Deliberately so.”

“How do you - ” Piper begins, but then she checks herself and showily checks the time on her phone. Waving towards the school’s entrance, she says, “I guess we’ve probably got to go?”

“Okay,” says Annabeth, and leaves the car with a sigh like she entered it.

* * *

Percy strides into the band room just as Mr. Johnson lifts his baton to rap it against his stand, signalling the start of rehearsal. Annabeth’s eyes, half-willingly, follow his shuffling into his seat and watch him plop his tattered music binder onto a stand.

It’s finally the same way it’s always been. Piper is absentmindedly whooshing warm air through her flute, tapping the keys with chipped nails. Travis Stoll has continued his protest of refusing to bring a spit towel until he gets a solo. Octavian is wetting his reed with an obnoxiously loud slurping sound every thirty seconds. (Annabeth’s in the back row and she can still hear it. She’s convinced he has an allergy to his reed that causes extreme salivation and probably requires medical attention.)

It should be comforting, but it isn’t. Everything is wrong. She can’t concentrate as they warm up, even when Mr. Johnson yells at her (“Annabeth, you are  _ very _ out of tune! Are you flat or sharp?” “Uh - yes, sir!”). She’s left staring at her warm-up book as Mr. Johnson calls out measure numbers for their first piece, which forces her to ask her neighbor, a freshman trombone who has a concerning habit of constantly adjusting his spit rag with his hand, about where they’re starting (“Thanks - also, could you maybe not rub your spit all over my music?”). And when they get to her duet with Percy, she feels disconnected from everything, the notes flat and bland against the page.

Everything is wrong.

Mr. Johnson sighs as he cuts them off mid-solo. “Guys! It was so much better last week. You can do this, come on. Don’t lose focus.”

They start up again, and Annabeth desperately tries to feel something, to find the harmony, to search for the connection they’d found so easily before. Her eyes search for Percy’s head, unusually stiff as he plays. It’s just notes, and more notes, and more notes, falling and landing dead on the floor.

“No!” says Mr. Johnson, shaking his baton after he cuts them off again. “Do you  _ hear _ this? I know you’re tired, okay? We all are. Fight for it. If you’re not exhausted by the end of rehearsal, you’re not putting everything into it. One more time, and then you’re going to have to work on this on your own. I’m not wasting more rehearsal time on this section.”

Annabeth fights for it. She pulls and pushes the melody around Percy, trying to hear him, trying to feel his line of music over hers. She feels Percy doing the same, exchanging the tune with her, but the line of his shoulders is tight and she knows that hers is, too. She’s disappointed, and sees the same in Mr Johnson’s face, in the purse of his lips as he motions for the band to continue. 

It’s finally the same way it’s always been, and it’s not.

As rehearsal ends and she packs up her horn, she groans. She can’t sort anything out. There’s Athena and Frederick and Helen and Drew and Rachel and Piper and Percy and  _ her _ , and she doesn’t understand any of it. For the first time probably ever, she looks forward to her calculus class, because at least derivatives and Riemann sums have an  _ answer _ . 

Occasionally she looks up to see Percy fiddling with the saxophone strap around his neck as he chats with his friends. She glares holes through the back of his head, hoping he’ll turn around and smile and at least one thing will be kind of okay. He turns a bit and Annabeth feels herself suck in a breath, but then he suddenly picks up his case and strides out of the hall.

Piper finishes packing away her own things and journeys to Annabeth’s side of the band hall before leaning quietly on stand, her flute bag tucked between her legs.

“Ready?” asks Piper.

“No,” says Annabeth, swinging her bag over her shoulder. “But let’s go, anyways.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me? updating? really?  
> gosh, i'm sorry that i haven't been updating this consistently! this chapter is a bit different in tone than the others, so i'd love to know what you think.


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